For a few hours each month, volunteers head into bushland around Anstead and Pullenvale with gloves, hand tools and a fairly unglamorous list of jobs.
September will bring another round of that work, with Pullen Pullen Catchments Group (PPCG) bushcare sessions scheduled at Anstead Bushland Reserve on 6 September, Pullenvale Forest Park on 13 September and Woodward Place Park on 18 September.
They will be cutting back weeds without damaging native plants underneath, returning to old planting sites and working along creek banks where vegetation can take years to recover. At Anstead, some of that work is particularly painstaking because the ground being cleared provides habitat for one of south-east Queensland’s smallest threatened reptiles.
This kind of maintenance rarely attracts much attention, but it has been part of life in Brisbane’s western suburbs for more than a quarter of a century.
PPCG has been undertaking bush regeneration in the Pullen and Pullen Pullen Creek catchments since its incorporation in 1998. Its wider district — Pullenvale, Pinjarra Hills, Bellbowrie, Anstead and Moggill — covers about 55 square kilometres.
Today, the group works with Brisbane City Council and local volunteers at the three public bushcare sites, with working bees continuing throughout the year.
The Bushland That Almost Became More Houses
Pullenvale Forest Park is a reminder that the local landscape could easily have looked very different.
In December 1993, developer Becton Corporation sought to rezone about 143 hectares for a subdivision of roughly 1,200 lots. Brisbane City Council refused the proposal and, following a Planning and Environment Court battle involving more than 430 objections, the developer eventually reached a compromise with Council and local residents.
The development was reduced to about 220 allotments, while 12.6 hectares along Pullen Pullen Creek was set aside as Pullenvale Forest Park.
Protecting the land did not mean the job was finished. Looking back on the campaign for PPCG years later, local resident John Griffiths put it neatly: “But parks need nurturing, whether as garden parks or bushland.”
Volunteers have since helped regenerate the park’s rainforest, vine forest and eucalypt areas through planting, weed removal and ongoing maintenance.
The creek system remains part of PPCG’s work today. The group received a 2025 People of Post grant to support water-quality monitoring connected with platypus conservation, and is involved in a Queensland Government-funded project running from 2025 to 2027 aimed at improving habitat for platypus and the vulnerable collared delma.
Careful Work at Anstead
PPCG describes Anstead Bushland Reserve as more than 130 hectares and Brisbane City Council’s largest nature reserve on the river. The reserve contains several regional ecosystems and is recognised by Council as a place where koalas can be seen in the wild.
Volunteers with Friends of Anstead Bushland have been working through a five-year site plan developed with Council. One of its main approaches is natural bush regeneration: keeping existing native vegetation where possible and progressively weakening the weeds competing with it rather than clearing everything and starting again.
The project established a series of 16-by-16-metre working sites, where volunteers have learnt to distinguish native plants from weeds, cut invasive vines and return repeatedly to deal with regrowth.
Those return visits are a large part of bushcare. Weed seeds germinate again, vines reappear and recovering native vegetation can need years rather than weeks to establish.
Council funding has also brought professional assistance into the reserve. A $7,699.80 Lord Mayor’s Environment Grant funded ecological restoration at Anstead, including weed-control work. Council separately has a 3.1-hectare environmental restoration site at Anstead Bushlands, established in 2022 to strengthen habitat and the corridor between the Brisbane River and Anstead Bushland Reserve.
Habitat for an Elusive Local
Some of the most delicate work at Anstead is aimed at the collared delma, a tiny legless lizard listed as Vulnerable under Commonwealth environmental law.
The Australian Government identifies Anstead Bushland Reserve as containing a large area of suitable habitat and describes it as the most important collared delma population in the region.
Its preferred habitat includes open eucalypt forest with native grasses and rocky outcrops. Creeping lantana can overwhelm that ground layer, so previous PPCG habitat work has used labour-intensive hand weeding without heavy machinery or herbicides in sensitive areas.
The reason for that care became tangible on 24 April 2025, when a collared delma was spotted during weeding in Anstead Bushland Reserve.
At Woodward Place Park, the emphasis shifts again. The 6.16-hectare Pullenvale park contains remnant endangered regional ecosystem 12.3.16, a notophyll vine forest beside Pullen Creek, as well as hollow-bearing trees. Volunteers work on weed removal and rehabilitation of the existing forest.
Anstead, Pullenvale Forest Park and Woodward Place form part of a much bigger citywide effort. Brisbane City Council says its Community Conservation Partnerships Program works with more than 8,000 community members, while Habitat Brisbane supports 150 volunteer bushcare groups.
Locally, those numbers come down to something much simpler: people returning to the same patches of bush, sometimes for years, so earlier restoration work is not lost.
Want to Lend a Hand?
The September working bees are not the end of the 2026 program. Further sessions are scheduled at Anstead Bushland Reserve on 4 October, 1 November and 6 December; Pullenvale Forest Park on 11 October, 8 November and 13 December; and Woodward Place Park on 16 October, 20 November and 18 December.
More than 30 years after part of Pullenvale’s creekside bushland was preserved from development, and 28 years after PPCG was incorporated, the work is less about one dramatic intervention than steady maintenance. Each working bee adds another few hours to a restoration effort measured not in weekends, but in decades.
Published 31-August-2026
