00:02This isn't any ordinary working bee.
00:06The mud crabs, as they're known, are helping bring the Cooks River back from the brink.
00:11You don't realise how much change there has been until you go back and look at the photographs you took
00:16in 1990.
00:17For decades the river was considered an industrial dump, where fish kills and chemical spills were a semi-regular event.
00:24Basically it was just used as a dumping ground. Cars, bikes, sewerage, you name it.
00:30My first encounters with the river weren't very nice for many years. We just avoided it pretty much.
00:38After forming 20 years ago, the mud crabs now have hundreds of volunteers who each work on their own section
00:45of the river, restoring bushland and cleaning up pollution.
00:48They have done the lion's share of much of the naturalisation work, and they're unsung heroes.
00:54It's pretty cool seeing how far it's come, but there's still a long way to go, and yeah, it's nice
00:59to be part of that.
01:00With a fast growing population in surrounding suburbs, this river has become all the more important for its recreational value.
01:07But locals say further efforts are needed to return parts of this catchment to its natural state,
01:11or else it will continue to be regarded by some as just another stormwater drain.
01:16There are still concrete drains. We also have a massive problem when it comes to the sheet metal piling, where
01:24there's kilometres of that.
01:25Who looks after that?
01:27They're breaking down. The banks are almost dangerous in parts, and it's just horrible.
01:32It makes the water run too fast. There's no ecology able to develop along the riverbanks.
01:38A battle that's not over yet, wrestling with the river's toxic legacy.
01:43I'm concerned about all of them on each other.
01:43сам궈zo quicker they managed to tils the winter.
01:43It's not on the road.
01:44I hope for people to entertain as with them fringe.
01:44Jaylee Kicalman's process, because if you guys live here's a place on that park,
01:46this background should be prepared, it's the only one that took place on that park.
01:46The hands-on stream, except I can have to make the national park like that and collect as well.
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