Appleby School river sign repair fund

Appleby school’s kids river sign vandalised

Our journey to become kaitiaki of the river Waimeha started on May the 23rd 2020. Our syndicate went on a school trip with a fishing and game officer called Lawson Davies. He did some electric fishing which is a harmless way to check for fish and bugs that live in the river. We caught nothing! Lawson said that it was his first time ever to catch nothing using this technique. What we did find was piles of litter in and on the edges of the river. We felt devastated that there was so much rubbish. Lawson said it was good and bad. It was good because we were now interested in the river’s health but bad because there were things that needed to be done. That got us thinking how could we help our local river?

So Appleby senior syndicate decided to go back on the 23rd of June 2020 with a couple of members of EMR (experiencing marine reserves) to do some testing and a big litter pick up. We carried out tests on the water clarity, water flow and trying to find bugs and small fish. The results were interesting and showed the river was in a better state than we thought. They were good results. But we found so much rubbish! Including tyres, plastic, tin cans, cigarette buts, polystyrene and glass! All up we found more than a trailer load of rubbish. Unfortunately the big problem of the rubbish was more prominent than ever.

Back at school we did a litter audit which showed people were dumping everything from car tyres to coke cans. We felt annoyed that people were using the river as a dumping ground so we told our teachers we wanted to become kaitiaki of our stretch of the river and commit to regular litter clean ups there.

On October 13 2020 w did another litter pick up at the river. We can access the river easily as our school’s neighbour gives us permission to walk through their orchid fields. We walked around in groups with gloves and rubbish bags to put the litter in. Although we still picked up a lot of litter it was great to see the amount was slightly decreasing and our efforts were having an impact but still it was not enough.

We then asked Tasman District Council if they could put a sign up at the river to remind people not to leave rubbish behind. The council agreed and said Appleby School senior syndicate could design the sign. So we got straight to work and in November there was a competition in the senior syndicate to make a sign for our river to try and stop people littering. Everybody went into a group and drew some ideas for our sign. 3 people’s designs got chosen and they worked together to create an awesome sign.

In early December the sign was made from our designs, with a metal plate on the back so no one could break it easily. We went back to the river in late December to see our sign in place and did another litter pick up. It felt good to see our sign up and we were continuing to be the kaitiaki of our river.

In February 2021 one of our classmates went to the river and saw the sign and had been damaged. She was one of the kids who had designed the sign so she was pretty upset. Someone had decided to get a power tool and cut a hole right in the middle which was 20.5cm by 22.5cm. This was not okay. It made us extremely annoyed, sad and disappointed.

We are not giving up on our river or letting the person who did this win. We have started a ‘give a little’ page to try and raise the $400 to replace the sign as well as other fundraising at community events.

Thank You very much for helping us help our river stay clean and safe.

By James Mollet, Kyle Powell, Charlie Kempthorne and Ashton Calveley

Year 6 Appleby School students.