A month with Aurora Intern Ashleigh Petkovic: Reef Assist and Alliance member visits

We recently had the pleasure of hosting Ashleigh Petkovic through the Aurora Internship Program. Ashleigh, a young Aboriginal woman from Perth and Shark Bay, is currently studying a Bachelor of Science and Arts at the University of Western Australia, majoring in Marine Biology and minoring in Indigenous Knowledge, History and Heritage.

Ashleigh joined the Wet Tropics Restoration Alliance for four weeks, contributing to the first phase of our restoration project database and supporting engagement with First Nations groups to explore how the Alliance can better assist in their restoration activities.

Phase one of the restoration project database gathers feedback and information on the types of data people currently store on their restoration projects. This work will help inform the structure of a potential Wet Tropics-wide restoration project database – a ‘dream’ project, currently unfunded. Having a centralised system to capture historic and current restoration efforts across all areas of the Wet Tropics is a clear need, one that would significantly improve how we track, coordinate and support restoration across the region. Professor Sigrid Heise-Pavlov from the School for Field Studies has also written a great article on this topic in this newsletter.

Ashleigh’s efforts and insights into how the Alliance can strengthen support for First Nations groups working in restoration were also highly valued. If you’re a First Nations group working in restoration in the Wet Tropics and have feedback on how the Alliance can better support your work, please reach out to us at restoration@wtma.qld.gov.au.

Ashleigh’s  time with us was a blend of hands-on fieldwork, cultural engagement and project development, and she tackled it all with thoughtfulness, curiosity and an eagerness to get her hands dirty.

Ashleigh hit the ground running in week one, joining the team on the Office of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage’s Reef Assist field trip. She, along with approximately 40 others, visited the Mulgrave Landcare and Catchment Group nursery and the restoration sites of Jaragun Ecoservices, Johnstone Region Landcare Group, North Queensland Land Management Services and Choorechillum PBC.

This gave her a strong introduction to riparian restoration, landholder collaboration, and the regional network of partners involved in the Queensland Government’s $33.5 million Reef Assist program, funded under the Queensland Reef Water Quality Program.

In week two, Ashleigh joined the Alliance coordination team for a day trip to the Daintree. We kicked off the day with Jabalbina Yalanji Aboriginal Corporation, where Ranger Coordinator Jason Petersen showed us around their Reef Assist project site at Wawu Dimbi. Launched in 2023, the project set out to restore critical riparian zones along the Daintree River, improving water quality and reducing sediment runoff to protect the Great Barrier Reef.

Their team faced a tough dry season early on, which made it difficult to keep young trees alive. Then in December 2023, Cyclone Jasper struck. The Daintree River rose to a record 15.85 metres, wiping out the entire planting site and destroying around 3,000 trees. After first supporting the local community with recovery efforts, they turned back to the restoration site, clearing debris, repairing sheds, cleaning out nurseries, and started replanting all over again. Today, the site is fully replanted with over 10,000 native trees. A huge shout-out to the Jabalbina team for this mammoth accomplishment and their clear love for their traditional lands.

Next for the Wawu Dimbi site is a pilot project in partnership with Eco Markets Australia and Terrain NRM to trial the stacking of both Carbon Credits and Cassowary Credits. This initiative aims to drive large-scale rainforest restoration, improve landscape connectivity, and boost climate resilience in the Wet Tropics. By using a market-based approach, it ensures payments are linked to real, measurable outcomes.

Having witnessed the immense work that has gone into the development of Cassowary Credits by Alliance founding member Terrain NRM, we’re eager to see this pilot in action and to learn how credit stacking could create stronger, more sustainable incentives for restoration, particularly for First Nations-led projects on Country.

Later in the day, we visited the ever-impressive team at ClimateForce. We were welcomed by Research Director Jack Lever at their off-grid Cape Kimberley research station, a 527-acre property powered entirely by solar energy. With such passionate, trailblazing young researchers and a rotating crew of international volunteers, it’s a wonder the place isn’t powered by brainpower alone.

ClimateForce is pioneering a unique blended revegetation methodology that merges ecological restoration with sustainable food production. This method integrates complementary plant species at different canopy levels, encouraging biodiversity, soil health and long-term productivity. Their system includes productive tree species like cacao, durian, tamarind and granadillo, alternated with natives like Acacia.

Of course, no trip to the Daintree is complete without a visit to Rainforest Rescue’s nursery and headquarters. The Cow Bay nursery, at 8,000 sqm, is the Daintree’s largest and is set to produce 150,000 trees per year. If you’re in need of native trees, head over to their website or visit them at 1506 Cape Tribulation Rd, Cow Bay.

In week three, Ashleigh joined us to inspect a Cairns Airport restoration site at Dunne Road in Cairns. This site is an environmental offset project that focuses on hydrologic restoration to promote natural mangrove recolonisation using cost-effective, scientifically validated methods. To hear more about this project and see the site in person, come along to our workshop and field trip on 11 September.

Ashleigh’s energetic youth was put to good use during our day with the Noongyanbudda Ngadjon Rangers, who are leading the Reef Assist project for Choorechillum RNTBC PBC. This sloping site along the Johnstone River is one of several riparian revegetation areas the team is restoring under the Queensland Government’s $33.5 million Reef Assist program. With Rangers Mark and Andrew on the augers, Kylie introduced us to the sensory joy of making water crystals. We all got involved, adding water crystals and fertilisers into the holes, followed by strategically arranged native plants, placing flood tolerant species along the water’s edge, with a mix of pioneer and slower-growing species across the site.

Seeing the freshly planted site at the end of the day made all the hard work worth it. With the ranger team now keeping on top of watering until the wet season arrives, we can’t wait to revisit the site later and see how much it’s grown.

We couldn’t leave the Tablelands without a visit to the wonderful folks at TREAT. Based at the QPWS Rainforest Restoration Nursery at Lake Eacham, volunteers gather every Friday morning for seed preparation, sowing, potting and plant maintenance. Volunteers are always welcome, so if you’re a local or just visiting on a Friday, pop in! It’s a great place to learn from the wide range of expertise within the nursery group. Don’t forget to allow time to visit the display centre.

All in all, we were so grateful to have young Ashleigh as part of our little coordination team for a month. Her internship gave us the opportunity to step out of the office and spend some one-on-one time with many of our members. Emails, video links and newsletters are always great, but there’s nothing like a face-to-face chat over a cuppa in the sunshine.

It was also a good reminder of how valuable the Alliance workshops and annual events are for connecting with others in the region. Even if the subject matter isn’t directly relevant to you, just being around others working in the same space with shared goals can give you a much-needed boost.