North West Local Land Services (LLS) hosted the Peel River Safari bus tour last week for landcare volunteers and other interested people, roving from Duncan’s Creek near Nundle back to the Jewry St weir in Tamworth.

Participants tested the salinity, PH level, turbidity and water life diversity at Duncan’s Creek, Wooloomin and Tamworth.

They found they were all quite different but fell within desirable parameters.

LLS senior land services officer Col Easton said it had been a “wonderful day exploring the Peel subcatchment”.

He said people should be “making decisions based on how a river behaves rather than trying to control the river”. This could mean farmers leaving a “buffer zone” between the river and their stock or crops to allow for flooding events, for example.

“It’s about people understanding how the river functions so it improves people's way of behaving,” Mr Easton said.

“Rivers have a life of their own, they obey laws ...

“[However] there are things that we can do to work around those, and it’s about having that knowledge to be able to work around them and use them to our advantage, so that we benefit and the river benefits also.”

Mr Easton said one participant had said after the tour that they could see that “the everyday decisions we make, make us all natural resource managers”.

“We all have a place; and we all have not only just a responsibility, we all play a part in managing rivers and biodiversity,” Mr Easton said.

LLS will host another field day on Friday: this time, the Quipolly Safari.

Like the Peel safari, it will explore what makes our waterways work, how our rivers work and what changes them. 

There will be tests for water quality and aquatic life – and, being an evening tour, participants will also go spotlighting for owls, microbats and other mammals.