Community
17 March, 2026
Cleaning up at Clump Point
OVER A couple of hours on a hot Sunday afternoon at Mission Beach, a group of volunteers committed to keeping their foreshore areas pristine by donning gloves, arming themselves with litter grabbers, scouring the coastline and hopping the rocks to search for rubbish.
They ended the afternoon picking up over 70 kilograms of bottle tops, marine flotsam, and other rubbish including an old tyre and PVC piping in a successful community cleanup effort.
More than 20 people – kids, parents and seniors – targeted areas around Clump Point, including near a traditional cultural rock area known as the Fish Trap.
“It was really good that we had school children and their parents, the people that worked in that area in particular, then from the Fish Trap further out along, at some point, we’ve had some of the more athletic, energetic people capable of walking over the rocks without falling and hurting themselves,” Peter Rowles, of C4 Community for Coast and Cassowary Conservation said.
“There were a lot of soft drink bottles, some glass bottles, lots of bottle tops, bottle caps, you know, things like that,” he said.
“There was a certain amount of styrofoam.”
He said what is common in such clean up events is that blue coloured bottle tops are frequently picked up, but not so much other coloured plastics.
“The thing is, when you go out on the beach and you look, you won’t even possibly recognise some of the white bits. What people typically see is blue – it’s the most obvious colour.
“I said to my granddaughter and her friend, ‘well, see what you can find’. And they went looking, and they got red, yellow, green, blue and white. All the different plastics in in very small pieces.”
The key local environment group says any piece of plastic or foam rubbish picked up from the beach and foreshore areas could mean another marine animal’s life is saved.
“The longer plastic is in the water, the more it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces,” Mr Rowles said.
“We know about how turtles can eat plastic bags and things, and they will accumulate in their stomachs.
“But it’s not recognised how frequently the sea birds will see and pick up some plastic as well.
“There are some good research articles on this now, where they’re doing gut analysis and finding that their stomachs just gradually get packed up with plastic, which is not good, meaning that they just they die of starvation because they can’t digest anything.”
The annual clean-up has been running for four years at and around the Fish Trap, which has cultural significance to the Djiru traditional owners.
“The Fish trap and the Clump Point headland are both prone to accumulating plastic debris due to their positioning on the coast,” Cosi Stokeld, organiser of the event said
“We were supported by Tangaroa Blue, whose representative weighed and analysed the collected debris for the AMDI (Australian Marine Debris Initiative) database,” she said.
“We had a huge 3.55-metre tide at 8am so the conditions were excellent for the cleanup.”
The Rainforest School also did its Clean Up Australia Day outing on Friday just before the event, at a site next to the Fish Trap.
Another regular volunteer at the clean-up day is Cassowary Coast Councillor Trudy Tschui, who again fronted up on Sunday 1 March to help.
“This annual event continues to remove small plastics and other items from our coastline,” Cr Tschui said.
“Community efforts in these events play an important part in keeping our beautiful coastline pristine and inviting to all, and thanks to everyone for their continuous action.”
Read More: Mission Beach