After 7 active years, Visions for Armidale Creeklands Incorporated held a Special General Meeting (February 2025) to determine our future. After reviewing our progress and financial situation, we resolved to wind up as an Incorporated Association.

In spite of this sad decision, we maintain our ‘Visions for Armidale Creeklands’ and will continue as an informal community group in the hope that we will see our city’s creeklands further transformed with billabongs, constructed wetlands, ponds and healthy flowing water.

Our final meeting started by reflecting on the water catchment for our creeklands, which begins at the magnificent Duembandyi (or Mount Duval).

We gave credit to all of our supporters, members and especially our hard-working committee over our seven years of existence.

Before our association formed – way back in 2002 – an informal group of passionate residents got together to talk about ideas for improving the creeklands. Back then, the Armidale Express ran a front-page story about our first meeting with the heading "That's the bold plan for creeklands"!

Some 15 years later (in 2017), when we felt our ideas had fallen on deaf ears, we decided to form a not-for-profit association called Visions for Armidale Creeklands Incorporated to make more progress on our ideas.

During our final Special General Meeting, we highlighted the many activities and achievements over our 7 years. These are described briefly below …

Soon after we formed as an association, we finalised a document explaining our visions of water across this classic city of Armidale and presented these ideas to Council.

We have had quite an impact on social media, reaching 1,400 people with some of our posts on Facebook and Instagram.

Our website was created with lots of inspirational images, and it continues to this day. It provides readers with access to all of our blogs about the creeklands including for example: historical aspects, our bus trips, our planning activities, the need for nature play areas for children and our support for increasing the water supply for Armidale.

Over several years, we conducted surveys of members of the community and association to learn about preferences for improvements to the creeklands. The clear conclusion from these surveys was that the community wants to see continuously flowing water. Survey respondents also want our regional city’s playgrounds to be just as good as those in major cities.

We have conducted three bus tours of the creeklands. The first, in 2019, was along the entire length of the creeklands.

Another was held with water experts in 2020 when we came up with plans to recycle water from the overflow of the city’s water treatment plant.

We wrote to Council explaining our vision for recycling the 5 ML of overflow water which runs each day from the water treatment plant into Dumaresq Creek. Advice from a water engineer explained how, for less than $400,000, we could pump water from near where water flows from Yoogoonda Gully into Dumaresq Creek, upstream to the western edge of the city (near UNE’s Lake Zot) and continuously flow back downstream to maintain oxygenated water even in drought times.

The third tour, in 2021, was with representatives of the local Aboriginal community to learn more about what they would like to see along the creeklands.

In 2019, during the worst drought in recorded history, we witnessed the redevelopment and expansion of an off-stream water storage in Armidale, called Lake Zot, at the University of New England. This demonstrated how it is feasible to create beautiful and substantial water storages adjacent to the creek within the city of Armidale.

Since our association began, we have discussed the locations along the creeklands that we feel are of highest priority for developing off-stream water storages, billabongs or constructed wetlands. These types of intervention are likely to be the best options to achieve our visions without exacerbating the potential for flooding.

It is most important that we understand the linkage between Armidale and Dumaresq Dam - which was Armidale’s first water storage, built in 1898 - near the foot of Mt Duval, some 13km upstream. The 300 ML stored in that dam means that the natural flows downstream along Dumaresq Creek are severely interrupted. So, when we seek to restore environmental flows, we are wanting to find ways to source environmental water without wanting to remove Dumaresq Dam. We ask, why can’t we create more off-stream ‘Lake Zots’ to supply this environmental water?

The locations we suggest are good candidates for billabongs, constructed wetlands or ponds are (from west to east along Dumaresq Creek):

A billabong just to the west of Elm Drive at UNE.
A substantial constructed wetland west of the Widders Bridge on the Armidale bypass (to be visible to travellers on the bypass).
A constructed wetland south of the Donnelly St bridge at the intersection of Martins Gully with Dumaresq Creek.
A constructed wetland to the north of St Peters preschool (in O’Dell St) from Elizabeth Park 1 to the west on the south side of Dumaresq Creek.
A billabong in the area to the north-west of Elizabeth Park 2.
A billabong in the area at the eastern end of Elizabeth Park 2.
A billabong on the south-west corner of the Markham and Dumaresq St roundabout.
A billabong on the Beardy St side of the old swimming pool entry (Stage 1 of the Creeklands Master Plan).
A billabong near Harris Park 2 on eastern side near Dangar St.
A substantial constructed wetland or pond within the Civic Park area.
A billabong in the Curtis Park area – just north of the new Nature Playground.
A billabong to the north of Rologas fields 1 and 2.
A constructed wetland to the east of Wicklow fields 3 and 4.
A constructed wetland to the south of the second North fields ground.
A constructed wetland where Norths Fields meets Dumaresq Creek and Yoogoonda gully (where 5 ML of water flows each day from the Water Plant wastewater ponds to Dumaresq Creek).

(Note: locations 1-8 above are all upstream of the old gas works and so are less likely to pose risks of contamination arising from any earth works. This means they will be less costly to construct).

Google Earth image showing our suggestions for 9 of the proposed 15 potential locations for billabongs, constructed wetlands or ponds.

As part of our plans to improve the creeklands, we were awarded a bushfire recovery grant to come up with plans to improve the creek along Black Gully. We held a community consultation meeting in 2021 and then developed our plans together with Stringybark Ecological. We created a concept map and helped complete a Black Gully Rejuvenation Plan and Review of Environmental Effects which, when funded and implemented, will result in more ponds and walking/cycling tracks along Black Gully in Armidale. This will enhance the precinct behind New England Regional Art Museum (NERAM) and the Aboriginal Cultural Centre and Keeping Place (ACCKP).

Around the same time, we asked our members what their preferences for some watery visions were. The result was clear that the two favourite images were of a constructed wetland – the Mike O’Keefe wetland – located next to Kentucky St. It is worth noting that this is a constructed wetland which started life ages ago as a dam to provide drinking water for Armidale’s police horses. The third favourite is of Dumaresq Creek just south of the Consett Davis playing fields at the University of New England.

One of our proudest moments was in 2021, when Adam Marshall was successful in getting $3 million dollars of NSW Government funds awarded to implement Stage 1 of the Armidale Creeklands Master Plan. It must be emphasized that this would not have happened had our association not formed, because the Creeklands Master Plan would not have been developed.

We were pleased to be invited to a presentation on concept plans for stage 1 of the Creeklands Master Plan.

We are delighted that Council has made a start on the $3m Stage 1 of the Creeklands Master Plan with the wonderful replacement of the old heritage-listed wooden bridge linking Beardy St and the swimming pool complex.

We have long argued for more nature play areas for children. Following on from Council successfully building a nature play area at Dumaresq Dam, we are delighted that Council has now built a nature play extension of the Curtis Park playground.

We continue to admire the water features obvious to visitors to many other Australian towns and wonder why we can’t do even better.

We have been supportive of the wonderful work done by hundreds of volunteers in the Armidale Urban Rivercare Group (AURG) over more than 20 years who have transformed the creeklands precinct to the beauty and function it has today.

But we still question: where is the ‘river’? We can all do more to transform our drain into a beautiful series of ponds, wetlands and streams which are designed to mitigate floods and yet continue to be healthy during drought times.

During 2023, we embarked on an ambitious sponsorship program where we sought financial support from individuals and 360 local businesses to conduct a competition for school children to develop ideas for the creeklands.

Unfortunately, we failed to raise sufficient funds through that campaign and so, in early 2024, we decided to apply for a Federal Government grant under the Urban Rivers and Catchments program.

We applied for a $500,000 project to develop a credible, integrated vision for Armidale's creeklands. This was to include studies of three components: (1) First Nations perspectives, (2) sources of environmental water, and (3) landscape concepts for the entire creeklands precinct.

Sadly, our application for this grant was unsuccessful.

So, this left our association with no sponsorship money and no government grant.

With insufficient funds, in spite of our considerable efforts, our committee decided to ask our membership if we should wind up. In February 2025, after seven years, we did just that! Yes, it was a regrettable decision to cease our incorporated status. Nevertheless, we resolved to continue as an informal community group which will continue to argue for healthier and more attractive waterways along our city’s creeklands. We plan to create a video explaining some of our ideas and will continue occasional posts - as an informal community group - on our website and on our Facebook and Instagram pages.

Some of our major conclusions were crystallised in our submission to Council on its Local Strategic Planning Statement (in March 2024), where we made a number of points:

“We continue to hope that one day Armidale Regional Council will realise that improving the Creeklands precinct with more healthy flowing water is the key to improving so much about our city, its beauty, and its attractiveness to visitors and residents”.
“A healthy vibrant creeklands should improve environmental outcomes but also be a driver for tourism as well as an asset for improved community health and wellbeing”.
“… this plan should mention the vital importance of returning environmental water to allow our drain to become a healthy, beautiful stream with accompanying billabongs, pools and constructed wetlands”.
“We agree that (water security) is the number one priority for our region. We add that environmental water should also be a focus so we can keep our main artery along our creeklands healthy and beautiful, even during dry times”.

Our seven years of activity and engagement with the broader community has given us the confidence that, the concepts we put forward here are well supported by the broader community. We reiterated the above conclusions in our submission on Council's draft Community Plan (in February 2025).

Now, in August 2025, no doubt some of our informal community group will happily make their submissions to the Open Space and Recreation Strategy being developed by Council. We encourage all those across the community, who support our Visions, to make their voices heard by August 20, 2025!

In summary, our Visions for Armidale Creeklands are shown on our banner:

Enhanced quality of life, economy, and beauty
Healthy stream flows, billabongs and constructed wetlands
Recreation, leisure, and reflection and
Carefully planned

One day, we hope our Visions for Armidale Creeklands will be realised!!!

7 years of Reflections …