Connecting Country

Restoring landscapes across the Mount Alexander region

Funding to date: $142,000+

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Connecting Country is an organisation that aims to link up people, communities and the landscape. 

This was the first project that we developed for our new granting program. Trustee, Geoff Park, and Executive Director, Beth Mellick, approached the community in and around Castlemaine in Central Victoria with the idea of establishing a landscape restoration project. There was a lot of interest so they helped set it up, back in 2008.

Our first grants totalling $80,000 were used to employ project workers, to fund planning and information workshops, produce a hardcopy blueprint, and produce an interactive website.

Connecting Country was then successful in receiving large multi-year federal government funding and delivered outcomes around preservation of Yellow-box Woodland communities and the Brush-tailed Phascogale. Other restoration projects have been carried out in partnership with the North Central CMA, Parks Victoria and the Dja Dja Wurrung.

This has been our ‘model’ project and during our initial support Wettenhall produced a ‘Checklist’ document. This Checklist was developed so that all the groups in the program could follow it, allowing them to pass through three stages and receive funding at each stage.