Student News - Year 9  Love where you live

Walk to the Aquatic Reserve to observe a permanent wetland. The Aquatic Reserve is an area of parkland containing a lake and stream. The lake is set in an old billabong which itself is the remains of an old pathway of the Murray River. The Murray River meanders in a trench it has eroded into the landscape. The entire floodplain exists within this trench. Under natural conditions this trench fills almost to the top every year, in October, the month that the snows melt and the catchment experiences its highest rainfall. When the river leaves its banks and fills the trench we call it a flood. When the flood recedes and the river returns to its channel the water is cannot escape from some places. We call these billabongs. 

The levee bank around the Aquatic Reserve stops water from draining back into the river. The lake and streams in the Aquatic Reserve are fed by a stormwater drain. The stormwater drain used to flow straight into the lake unfiltered. Now it passes through a series of small ponds. Each pond filters the water a little more. The water that enters the lake is quite clean.

When the lake becomes full, overflow takes water down to the river. The lake performs two functions: it filters water returning to the Murray and it provides a scenic backdrop for the park.

On our walk your task was to: observe these natural features and our human modifications of them; observe the habitat and how it varies around the lake; take photos of the vegetation; ask the following questions: What does this tell you about the condition of the environment? What plants do you recognise? What animals did you see? What animals might be here but you cannot see them? What questions do you have?

Peter Phillips 

Teacher of Humanities