Tathra a finalist for Clean Beaches Award

June 2, 2008: Tathra beach has been selected as a finalist in the national Keep Australia Beautiful, Australian Clean Beaches Awards.

Tathra won the NSW section of the competition last December and has been nominated by the Bega Valley Shire Council, on behalf of the Tathra community, for the national award.

Clean Beaches is part of the Keep Australia Beautiful 'Australian Sustainable Communities' Awards and celebrates the achievements of each finalist and, in a spirit of friendly competition, identifies, acknowledges and promotes Australia's best examples of excellence in grass roots environmental improvement in coastal areas from around the country.

The other finalists are Scarborough Beach in WA; Kingston, South East in SA; Freer's Beach, Port Sorell in Tasmania; Frankston Foreshore in Vic; and The Strand, Townsville, on Qld.

Hundreds of communities entered the awards competition this year, with tens of thousands of volunteers donating their time and effort for practical local initiatives.

In its nomination, Council praised the efforts of a range of Tathra organisations in working co-operatively to protect the Tathra environment.

They include Tathra Landcare, Clean Energy for Eternity, Tathra Surf Club, Lions Club and Sunshine Club, the shorebird protection group and the former Tathra Parks and Foreshores Committee.

Council has also nominated Tathra Landcare Group for the Dame Phyllis Frost Award.

Formed in 1993 the Tathra Landcare volunteers have waged a 15 year long war on bitou bush and has successfully treated more than 300 hectares of bitou bush-infested dune and reserve.

The group may soon be able to claim to be the first coastal community to completely eradicate the noxious weed.

Recently Tathra Landcare has introduced a control program focussing on the growing infestation threat posed by two other introduced noxious plant species, coastal spurge and bridal creeper.

Three members of the group, Joan Ennis, Jim Kelly and Dave Greenland,were awarded Local Hero medals by Coastcare for their work with the Tathra Landcare Group.

The first awards came in 1997 when the bitou bush program took out the National Landcare conference award for best practice in bitou bush control, the Keep Australia Beautiful foreshore protection tidy town award for bitou bush eradication and the 1997-98 Waterways award for foreshore protection.

In 1999 the Tathra Landcare Group took out the NSW Landcare community group silver award and in 2002 its efforts contributed to Tathra Beach taking out the annual Clean Beach award.

On a personal level, in 2004 Mr Kelly also won the Kleen Heat Regional Achievers Award for his work with Tathra Landcare.

Details of the Clean Beach nomination can be found on the Keep Australia Beautiful website, www.kab.org.au

Results are expected in mid-August.