The Glenlyon Progress Association recently received $4860 for a sustainable arts project through Regional Arts Victoria. The project, titled ‘Nature Devours Art’ will be a collaboration between the community, Glenlyon Progress Association, Glenlyon Upper Loddon Landcare Group, an artist and an environmental education consultant. 

Artist Jodie Goldring will work alongside environmental education consultant Nicole Howie to lead the community through the process of identifying and gathering indigenous and exotic plants growing alongside the riparian zone of the Loddon River.

The community will work collaboratively to build impermanent eco-scuptures and structures using natural and found objects from the area, which will be installed along the walkway, to be gradually absorbed back into the landscape by the elements.

Goldring said she initially met with members of the Glenlyon Progress Association, who showed her the area they were looking at revitalising. 

“I spent a couple of hours photographing and thinking. I put forward all these different ideas and now the community will be consulted to work out what they want to do,” she said. 

“One of my ideas is that we could make little boats by stitching together grasses and we could then let them go at the top of the river for kids to catch at the bottom.”

The main idea behind the project is to attract more people to the Biolink. 

“At the entrance to the Biolink there is a lot of beautiful, old, rusty wire. There is a gateway and I was thinking we could make a bit of an arch out of the wire so people driving past are drawn in to the area,” Goldring said.

Margaret Lockwood, who is a member of the Glenlyon Progress Association and the Landcare group, said people had been working on restoring the area since the late ’90s.

“It used to be all gorse and blackberry but we have cleared it all... We have this beautiful river in our backyard. We have these indigenous plants, we’ve got wallabies, kangaroos, a whole range of birds, frogs and insects,” she said.

“In the past we also used to have platypus but I’m not sure if they still live here. They shrunk back further north to more permanent pools during the drought.”

The Biolink is about three kilometres in length. It stretches from the Glenlyon dam right through to the general store at the other end of the town.

Glenlyon is the beginning of the Loddon River, which stretches all the way up to the Murray River. 

“It is a very significant waterway,” Goldring said.