In October 2020 the group started with a wonderfully social and well attended community consultation evening at the Dipton Golf Club.  Almost 50 people turned up and had a great time deciding that they wanted a community Catchment Group, and brainstorming ideas for the Catchment Group to do. 

They followed this up with a Lunch Under the Willows event in November at Milligans Park, where 50 people enjoyed a relaxed lunch and heard some great speakers on the history of Dipton and the health of the local waterways.  The Dipton Social Committee provided a very tasty BBQ lunch, sponsored by Alliance.

2021 saw lots of events including a very successful Know Your Issues Field Day at Frazer Brown’s Dairy Farm and Brian Russell’s Sheep & Beef Farm in May. There were great discussions on keeping sediment on your farms, creating wetlands, hill country development, good management practices, and B+LNZ led a great chat on Farm Environment Management Plans.

Other events included being involved with an AgResearch Pastoral Biorefinery workshop and giving feedback on how they saw this potential emerging ag technology fitting into a farm system, and working with B+LNZ to host two of their new Farm Environment Plan Workshops. They started being trained by Environment Southland in how to monitor the health of their streams using the SHMAK (Stream Health Monitoring Assessment Kit), and took part in a nationwide eDNA (environmental DNA) water quality monitoring programme, choosing Dipton Stream as their site. This will provide valuable information on the plants and animals found in and around New Zealand’s waterways.

They finished the year by hosting a really successful wellbeing evening with Wayne Langford and his wife (YOLO Farmers), and running a roadside clean up and community lunch, which starred many young Dipton heroes & ice cream, coffee and cake!

2022 was another super busy year. They ran a Native Seed Collection Field Day at Gavenwood Farm, and a Utilising Unproductive Land Field Day at Sue, Malcolm & Tom Day’s looking at native regeneration process. They hosted a Brews & Banter Drought Shout, a B+LNZ workshop on climate change and an interactive workshop on reducing waste with Trish Rankin. They supported lots of local initiatives, such as Southland District Council Welcoming Communities and the Shaping Our Future Call Me Southland, and the creation of a Southern Women NZ Group.

Following on from the success of their YOLO Farmer event, the group want to host a community social and wellbeing event each September.  In 2022, they had an amazing event with Bailley Unahi who is aiming to be New Zealand’s first female sit-skier at the 2026 Paralpymics in Italy. The group also selected the Castledown Wetlands for their local stream restoration project, along with running a small local survey on how their community is connected.

In October 2022, one of their members was funded by MPI, NZ Landcare Trust and MfE to attend the National Catchment Groups Forum in Wellington, and in December the group received funding from Thriving Southland to start their first major project looking at Greenhouse Gas reduction and their sequestration journey as a catchment called Carbon Neutral Dipton.

Carbon Neutral Dipton has been an amazing project and was the focus for the group for 2023. They had five case study farms with active buddy groups, meetings with experts (like Dr Ant Roberts from Ravensdown) and field days. All information on the project – reports, videos, progress – can be found here, and the group are now thinking about their next steps, and sharing what they have learnt through talks and presentations on their project.

Alongside their project they joined with the other 6 Oreti Catchment Groups to host a Mid & Lower Oreti bus trip to help understand their catchment better and all the great work that is being done to look after it, and hosted their third community social and wellbeing evening with Southland’s amazing international netball umpire Kristie Simpson. They were also a finalist in the Environmental Leadership in Farming Award for their Carbon Neutral Dipton Project, and were a finalist in the 2023 B+LNZ FMG Rural Champion Award for all the work they do to look after the wellbeing of farmers and farming communities in their special part of the Southland.

Greater Dipton are a great community Catchment Group, with more and more people are coming to their events, and flourishing community connections.