Bundamba / Bandaanba Creek

Bandaanba, meaning 'axe-stone place', in the Yagara language.

Information from  City of Ipswich Waterway Health Strategy, 2020

The Bundamba Creek sub-catchment covers a total area of 114km2 and arises in the Flinders-Goolman Conservation Estate. More than 90 per cent of the catchment is within Ipswich LGA.

In many sections, Bundamba Creek flows over bedrock which controls bed incision and provides a diversity of pool, run and riffle habitats. Historic vegetation removal and grazing has resulted in some areas of degradation along the creek and the erosive soils place the waterway at high risk.

The creek flows through rural, industrial and urban landscapes before entering the Bremer River estuarine. The upper sub-catchment is dominated by agricultural land uses and the lower sub-catchment is predominately urban.  The middle reaches have agricultural and extractive industries and host the Swanbank power station which has a license to discharge into the creek. The catchment faces major redevelopment in the coming decades with the new Ripley Valley urban development and new regional business and industrial area.

Special features of the catchment include: 

• Connected to Daly's (Bundamba) Lagoon
• Flinders-Karawatha regional corridor
• Ripley Valley Urban core
• Platypus detected in Bundamba Creek
• Connected to the important Indigenous cultural site of Evelyn Dodds Cultural Reserve
• Bundamba Creek Corridor Plan

Information from Waterway Health Strategy: Background Report, 2020

 Since 2012 Bundamba Creek has been one of a number of focal waterways and sites for the Habitat Connections program.  Habitat Connections is an investment strategy aiming to create and enhance riparian corridors in and around Ipswich. 

Bundamba Creek provided a good location for this program, with the waterway containing some of the remaining native vegetation in the catchment.  Beginning around Mount Flinders, Bundamba Creek flows through Ripley Valley into outskirts of the CBD through the suburbs of Swanbank, Blackstone and its namesake Bundamba before finding the Bremer River.  In these lower reaches, much of the creek flows on or through council owned parks and reserves which typically consist of dispersed mature trees and riparian corridors which are susceptible to weedy ingress.

High profile sites that were neither well used or highly visual located next to highways were identified as a priority and the removal of weedy mats in between the waterway and the mown grasses areas were tackled initially.  These areas were the revegetated using a mixture of native riparian or waterway species known to naturally occur along waterways.

The plants were planted using a combination of contractors and more importantly, community volunteers.  As the locations were already popular or visual there was a great deal of interest from schools and catchment groups in the local community.  Corporate and community planting days were organised and in 2014 over 6,000 plants were installed by groups such as the Bremer River Fund, Thiess staff, Japanese environmental students and children from Bundamba State High school.  One notably successful event was the Trees for Mum day.  This concept of planting a tree for, or with, your mum for Mother's Day has continued to grow in popularity.  Those taking part regularly return year on year to check 'their' trees and plant more and develop a vested interest in the site and its wellbeing.  The site has grown from a single 95m site to hover half a kilometre of riparian corridor along George Palmer Park with over 10,000 plants now in the ground.