By NOEL MURPHY
IT MIGHT be five years later but a lead and tar-riddled former gun club site at Eastern Park has finally been cleaned up … well, half of it.
State Government soil remediation consultants have cleared the elevated Corio Bay site of shattered clay targets that covered the ground in a forerunner to making the area open parkland.
But the heavily-polluted shoreline below the site – including vandalised historic lime kilns – is yet to be cleaned up.
The remediation works follow an Independent campaign over the past year highlighting bayfront bombsites around Corio Bay.
The gun club site is little more than a stone’s throw from parkland earmarked for a $1 billion convention centre and residential project next to Eastern Beach.
The site is also next to CSIRO’s high-security Animal Health Laboratories and Moolap’s saltworks birdlife haven, which attracts migratory species from the north Pacific.
The clean-up’s contracting project manager, Mark Foley, said the work removed broken clay targets and wadding from shells to a depth of 20mm to 80mm across the entire upper site.
He did not know when the lower shoreline area would be tackled.
The EPA issued a clean-up notice to Department of Sustainability and Environment five years ago before the gun club vacated the property. The area has been idle since the club cleared out four years ago.
State Government is responsible for rehabilitating the site and making it safe before City of Greater Geelong takes over as its manager.
A City Hall master plan for Eastern Park seeks to replant the gun club site and adjoining shoreline to as a coastal woodland.
The replanting would include casuarinas and banksias to stabilise the embankment and improve its degrade appearance. The plan expects new coastal vegetation to improve marine habitats along the tidal fringe.
