Ballarat residents young and old have donned gloves and high-vis to help clean up the Canadian Forest as a part of Clean Up Australia Day.
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They were among 750,000 Australians to take part in the national event on Sunday, March 3.
Among the 10,000 sites across the country, volunteers were expected to pick up more than 300,000 pieces of plastic, metal, glass, e-waste and other junk.
Friends of Canadian Corridor secretary Jeff Rootes was coordinating clean up efforts along Wilson Street in Ballarat's Candian State Forest.
He said the group tackled a different section of the park each year, but have seen little improvement in the amount of rubbish left in the forest.
"It's all mostly litter, fast food, drink cans, things like this, and some of this [area] gets hit pretty badly by rubbish dumpers," he said.
"There's usually a dump a week along this road, and Parks [Victoria] are very good at picking it up, but we're catching the bit in the middle."
"It's consistent [the amount] it's the same sort of stuff, household cleanouts, garden waste, I think it's consistent which is sad to say."
At the event, Member for Eureka Michaela Settle told The Courier clean up Australia day was about the community getting together and respecting the land.
"We're here on the land of the Wadawurrung and they've been extraordinary custodians, and we should continue to protect the land as they always have," she said.
"The friends of Canadian corridor have been an extraordinary community force for good, they had a lot to do with this being turned into a state park, and have really looked after this area."
Meanwhile, the restoration of almost ten kilometres of waterways on the Yarrowee River has been given a boost with a $701,000 grant handed to a local group which aims to improve land and waterways in the region.
The money, given to the Bunanyung Landscape Alliance from the state government's Green Links Program, will go towards work on 80.5 hectares along the river and it's tributaries.
The alliance is working with other community groups including the Leigh Catchment Group, Wattle Flat Pootilla Landcare Group, Friends of Canadian Corridor and Friends of Yarrowee for the project, which has identified sites in need of restoration.
It includes restoring the Lal Lal Drain site and 12 other wetland, creek and river sites.
Mr Rootes, who is also a spokesperson for the alliance, said all the old goldfields creeks around Ballarat were damaged and full of weeds.
He said the funding would allow them to provide a bit of "love and care" to the creeks which would include weeding and replanting works.
"A healthy creek doesn't have gorse, it's actually got healthy trees, and it's also got an understory and native plants in there," he said.
"It's got gaps in it to allow the lizards to survive, but it's got old trees and new trees.
"There's 45 kilometres of little creeks in just the Canadian Creek, and there's very few of them in good nick."
