Focus on filthy creek for Clean Up Australia Day

She and an American colleague decided to set up a group spanning Australia and the USA called Oceans in Focus, to educate and campaign for cleaner oceans workdwide.

Quoting World Economic Forum research which estimates that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish, Ms Bernasconi said she was on a mission.

“We’re all photographers, videographers and big travellers,” she said. “We’ve all seen enough of what’s going on in our ocean.

“We can say ‘us adults will fix it’, but the real change will come if our young people are, from the get-go, taught what to do with their rubbish, how to be an ambassador for the ocean.”

This weekend Ms Bernasconi will be acting locally, using Clean Up Australia Day to get busy getting rubbish out of Bensons Creek at Warilla, which has become notorious for being the place where the suburb’s litter comes to die.

The section of the creek behind Arcadia St in particular is where rubbish gathers, with resident Shaun Langlands and others telling the Mercury about the filth last November.

This Sunday Ms Bernasconi and other residents will be joining together for a joint clean-up effort, as Clean Up Australia Day events take place across the country.

“Right at the top of Bensons Creek is all of the rubbish that comes from McDonald’s behind,” she said.

“It sits there and pools there until we have rain. Once we have rain it washes down, into the creek, into Little Lake, into the ocean.”

She is encouraging any residents of Warilla and beyond to come and join in – and recommends wearing protective clothing.

“It’s got needles in there, it’s shocking,” Ms Bernasconi said. “There’s plastic bags, cans, plastic bottles.”

To find an event near you, visit the Clean Up Australia Day website.