NEWS

A junior rangers program set a target of 20 students. It now has 200. Ngawak Biik, meaning "Understand Country, Listen to Country" in Bunurong language, is a 90% Indigenous-led program on the Mornington Peninsula, developed by Mornington Peninsula Shire with the Bunurong Land Council after schools and families flagged that First Nations students had few opportunities to connect with culture at school, and that the gap was showing up in attendance. Students learn cultural land

Local Aboriginal history rarely makes it into an accessible, public format, let alone into a packed hall in a town of a few hundred people. The Friends of Stanley Athenaeum's biennial Geoff Craig Memorial Lecture set out to change that. The 7th lecture, delivered on 28 September 2025 at Stanley Memorial Hall, brought Waywurru researcher, historian and storyteller Megan Carter to speak on "Spaces of Survival: Aboriginal Reserves and Ration Depots in North East Victoria." Carte

At the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre's Community Kitchen in Footscray, the person teaching the cooking class is often the person who, a week earlier, was just receiving a meal. The Member Recipes Project flips that dynamic deliberately. Each quarter, three or four ASRC members are invited to share two or three recipes from their home countries, most recently Egyptian and Pakistani dishes, demonstrate how to cook them, and run a hands-on workshop for Community Kitchen voluntee

The roof tiles on McCrae Homestead had to come from Canada. That's the kind of detail that makes heritage restoration expensive, and exactly why the National Trust's Mornington Peninsula Branch had to fundraise hard to fix it. Built from 1843 by the McCrae family, among the earliest colonial settlers on the Peninsula (the suburb takes its name from them), the homestead later passed to the Burrell family for 75 years, before the National Trust bought it back from a McCrae desc

Four short, deliberately small events. That was Beechworth History and Heritage Society's answer to a big question: how do you get a town to actually engage with its own layered history, rather than just walk past the plaques? Timed to the National Trust's Australian Heritage Festival, "Dig into Beechworth" ran a Ching Ming commemoration at the town's historic Chinese cemetery, marking more than 2,000 Chinese people, many of them goldminers, interred there since the 1850s. Al

An outdoor bush chapel built from local Moorooduc stone, nearly sold off from under a community that had grown up with it. That was the starting point for the Cyril Young Memorial Chapel Association's eight-year restoration project in Shoreham. The chapel, now 75 years old, sits within YMCA Camp Buxton and doubles as a registered war memorial, named for Captain Cyril Young, who died as a prisoner of war in Borneo. It commemorates YMCA members and campers who served and were l

Most urban forest programs chase a canopy cover target. InCanopy built a tool to answer a harder question: which trees are we actually losing, and why? Melbourne Tree Ledger tracks historical and current canopy change across Greater Melbourne using aerial imagery, LiDAR and machine learning, then turns that analysis into something 12 local councils actually use for planning, compliance and public reporting. The platform's bet is that mature trees, which take decades to replac

Grade 3 and 4 students at St Joseph's Catholic Primary in Crib Point have a fortnightly appointment with Western Port Bay. At Woolley's Beach, students collect mangrove seeds, propagate them in the school greenhouse, then return to plant the seedlings and track how many survive. This year they've planted 1,000 seeds, with roughly 30% establishing, a result the school rightly counts as a strong outcome for young mangroves in a tidal environment. Funding through OzFish's Big Bl

Four years ago, this 3.8 hectare strip of roadside land in Seaford was known mostly for dumped rubbish and weeds. Now it grows 80% of all known Banksia species. Local resident Ross Shepherd started the Seaford Banksia Arboretum in 2022 on VicRoads-owned land, clearing the site and planting the first of what's now more than 2,500 Banksias, working toward a target of 3,500 suited to the area's sandy coastal soils. Funding has come from Rotary Australia, the Australian Plant Soc

Forty fish. Then more than four hundred, in a single breeding season. That's the turnaround for the endangered Eastern Dwarf Galaxias at The Briars in Mount Martha, achieved not through a hatchery or captive breeding, but by changing how water moves through a wetland. Mornington Peninsula Shire's Destination Conservation and Wildlife Team, working with Ecology Australia through the Briars Arc Program, slowed water loss, built shallow vegetated breeding areas and improved conn

Less than 8% of Victoria's Moonah Woodlands remain. St Joseph's Primary School in Sorrento decided that was worth doing something about. Partnering with the People and Parks Foundation, students have germinated and propagated Moonah Woodland species, then planted them out at Point Nepean National Park and Whitecliffs Foreshore Reserve alongside rangers, with Nature Links at St Johns Wood Bushland Reserve, and with the Friends of Blairgowrie Foreshore. Working with local ecolo

Under three pairs of parking bays in Clifton Hill, something unusual is happening: old tyres are helping trees grow three times faster. Porous Lane, working with the City of Yarra, Sustainability Victoria and the University of Melbourne, laid 80 square metres of permeable pavement made from about 240 recycled tyres and crushed rock. Instead of shedding stormwater straight into the drains like ordinary asphalt, the surface lets rain and air pass through to the tree roots below

Baw Baw Sustainability Network's pitch is almost cheeky: we assess, diagnose and treat your home's energy problems, like a doctor's visit for your house. Behind the joke is real, practical work. The Yarragon-based, largely volunteer-run group offers home energy assessments, blower door testing, thermal imaging, draughtproofing and underfloor insulation to households across Gippsland, completing 101 individual jobs in the past financial year alone. Its Cosy Home project went f

An 89kW battery bolted onto the Old Beechworth Gaol is about to do double duty: cutting emissions and keeping the lights on when the grid can't. Indigo Power's BEECH01, part of the ARENA-funded Community Batteries for Resilience Project, pairs a 339kWh battery with new rooftop solar (installed on internal-facing roof sections to protect the heritage site's appearance) to store local solar generation and share it with participating households through the Beechworth Community E

Our final 2026 ACCIONA Community finalist is Spring Ditch Festival! For over 140 years, the Stanley New Year's Day Sports drew this tiny township together in the same natural amphitheatre. Spring Ditch picks up that thread. Now in its fifth year, the family festival run by Rikki Raadsveld and Lex Fletcher fills the Stanley Recreation Reserve with an all-Australian music lineup, the Golden Boot Toss, sack races, arts and makers' stalls, and food from local vendors, alongside a

Well done to another 2026 ACCIONA Community Finalist - Sunbury Neighbourhood House Inc Nine gardens. One Labour Day. A postcard through the letterbox that read, in effect, "we'd love to see your garden." That's how Sunbury Neighbourhood House's inaugural Edible Garden Trail found its hosts. Organiser Christie had been turning the idea over for years before bringing it to the Neighbourhood House's "Sustainable Sunbury" program in 2024, and by March 2026 the trail was ready: si

Well done to our ACCIONA Community finalist - Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. 170 alumni. Seven cities. Zero cost to participants. The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre's Refugee Leadership Program is an eight-day intensive that trains people with lived experience of seeking asylum in advocacy, media, public speaking and digital communication, then sends them out to lead. Delivered in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart and Launceston, deliberately outside the usu

Congratulations to our 2026 ACCIONA Community Finalist - Chinese Stoke Support Group. For Chinese-speaking stroke survivors and their families in Victoria, recovery can mean navigating serious health decisions in a second language, often alone. The Chinese Stroke Support Group, was built to close that gap. Volunteer-led and entirely community-run, the Blackburn-based group offers bilingual health education, mobile health screenings, gentle exercise classes for stroke survivor

A lightning-struck Californian sequoia from Beechworth's Centennial Park is now seating in the town's revitalised Railway Precinct. That's the kind of detail that sums up this project. Led by Indigo Shire Council and Tourism North East as part of the Murray to Mountains Rail Trail Enhancements, the precinct has gone from an underused paddock to a landmark stop on the trail: nature play by Yackandandah sculptor Ben Gilbert, a public pavilion, accessible amenities, lighting upg

What started as a Container Deposit Scheme collection point in Kyabram has turned into a small circular economy. Kyabram Community and Learning Centre's Reuse and Renewal initiative now recovers containers for fundraising, paper and cardboard for fire starter bricks, and textiles through the "Rags in a Bag" program, while donated clothing, blankets and sleeping bags go straight to people who need them. A volunteer craft group turns spare fabric into quilts and beanies for pre