Laidley Creek Restoration Master Plan
Overarching multi-year collaborative restoration plan to make Laidley Creek more resilient to flooding, protecting farming, assets, and waterway health.
Restoring and reinforcing riverbanks to decrease erosion and sediment impacts on water quality, protect high-value agricultural land, and improve food security.The Laidley Creek Restoration Plan provides a blueprint for long-term, catchment-scale restoration efforts in Laidley Creek, unlocking more coordinated investment from multiple collaborators towards a common restoration goal.
Laidley Valley is a highly productive horticultural area within the nationally important Lockyer Valley. Many riparian areas along Laidley Creek have become degraded and, as a result, are a major source of sediment flowing to Moreton Bay, placing production areas at risk during times of flood.
After the devastating 2013 flooding event, a 16 km master plan between the towns of Mulgowie and Thorton in the Lockyer Valley was created to identify critical points for intervention in the landscape and options to increase resilience into the future. This process involved geomorphic assessment, field assessments, talking to local landholders and detailed hydraulic modelling.
Laidley Creek's severely eroded banks after flooding in 2013.
Since 2013, stabilisation works throughout the first 5 km in Reach 1 have been completed through eight projects with multiple funding partners, including the Port of Brisbane, Urban Utilities, and the Queensland Government. Healthy Land & Water has coordinated and delivered the on-ground works for each of these projects. The master plan has allowed multiple projects and partners to contribute to consistent and coordinated restoration efforts over 10 years.
What we are doing
In 2023, the master plan was updated through funding from Port of Brisbane to provide an assessment of the geomorphic trajectory of Laidley Creek for upstream reaches 2 and 3. The current master plan covers 16 km of creek bank providing a blueprint for coordinated restoration efforts over the next 10 years. New LiDAR capture and an updated field survey of 10 km of creek bed were used to assess changes since the original plan, including landscape changes due to the 2019 bushfires and 2022 flooding. Alluvium Consulting provided the geomorphic assessment, field survey and master plan development for restoration works.
Project works being delivered as part of the new Master Plan include:
- Protecting high-value agricultural land from erosion threats.
Well-established native revegetation across the full bank height in 2023. - Retaining sediment in upper catchments to prevent sediment pollution in Moreton Bay.
- Restoring Laidley Creek through innovative mixes of:
- Several bed control structures, consisting of rock chutes and cross channel structure, engineer-designed, to reduce the advancing front of the stream bed erosion upstream.
- Battering of the banks to reduce the likelihood of mass failure, provide increased channel capacity and provide a suitable surface for plant establishment.
- Decreasing topsoil loss in upper catchments from fast-flowing water.
- Increasing sediment depositing in upper catchments to prevent sediment pollution in Moreton Bay.
What we are doing
This project aims to stabilise riparian banks along Laidley Creek and improve catchment resilience.
It involves:
- Decreasing the
Decreasing sediment load in the waters of Laidley Creek through riverbank stabilisation. sediment load in the waters of Laidley Creek through riverbank stabilisation. - Improving the water quality in Laidley Creek and ultimately Brisbane River and Moreton Bay to decrease demand pressures for potable water and sediment loads in Moreton Bay.
Measuring success
Healthy Land & Water maintains and monitors restoration sites, especially after extreme weather events, through:
- Targeted replanting.
- Drone monitoring onsite.
- Reassessment of plant species suitability to each location.
We also improve collaboration on restoration works between private and government partners by compiling works that can serve as packages that allow private funding partners and government funding partners to contribute to a greater goal.
Why this project is important
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Laidley Valley is a highly productive horticultural area within the nationally important Lockyer Valley. Laidley Creek is degraded and unstable and, as a result, is placing production areas at risk during times of flood. Protecting the banks of Laidley Creek from erosion also prevents sediment from entering Laidley Creek, and ultimately reduces the sediment pollution in downstream waterways, including Lockyer Creek, the Brisbane River and ultimately Moreton Bay. The stability of the banks has been significantly affected since the 2013 flooding event due to:
A master plan covering 16 km of Laidley Creek was created in 2013 and then updated in 2023 to identify critical points for intervention in the landscape and options to increase resilience into the future. This plan covers three sections known as reaches. Throughout the past 10 years, funding and initiatives from the Port of Brisbane, Urban Utilities, and the Australian Government have completed works in Reach 1 and 2, spanning over 5 km of riparian zones. This plan addresses the need for landscape-wide planning of restoration works to maximise beneficial impacts. |
Project snapshot
| Project name: | Laidley Creek Restoration Master Plan |
| Project manager: | Vanessa Durand, & Samuel Morison, Healthy Land & Water |
| Catchment: | Laidley Creek |
| Timing: | 2013 – Ongoing |
| Partnerships: |
This project is supported by Healthy Land & Water, through funding from Urban Utilities, Port of Brisbane, Queensland Government, and Australian Government. |
| Related Articles: |
Project collaborators
Projects delivered as part of the Masterplan are supported by Healthy Land & Water, through funding from Urban Utilities, Port of Brisbane, Queensland Government, and Australian Government.
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