Tweet treat: Sewage treatment plant birdwatching tourism takes flight

The tiger snake slipped through the hatch in the birdwatching shelter and landed with a thump, metres from the feet of Lisa and Stephen Featherstone.

The British tourists were at MacLeod Morass wildlife reserve – a natural marsh fed by recycled water from a sewage treatment plant at Bairnsdale in Victoria’s east – when they got the surprise visit from one of Australia’s deadliest snakes.

Birdwatching bonanza: British tourists Stephen and Lisa Featherstone at the Western Treatment Plant in Werribee.Credit: Darrian Traynor

“It was just so hilarious. And terrifying,” Lisa said.

Within seconds – after Lisa took a photo – the snake fled, slipping through a gap in the floor and off into the water. “I don’t know who was more astonished – the snake, or us,” she said.

But the unflappable seasoned twitchers returned a week later and were rewarded with pelicans, great egrets, white-faced herons and hundreds of straw-necked ibis taking off.

“It was fantastic, unbelievable,” Lisa said.

Forget the beaches and cafes, the aptly named Featherstones from Yorkshire, England, are visiting Victoria for six weeks to see our birds. They will visit more than 30 sites, including some sewage treatment lagoons and fields.

On Tuesday, they took an eight-hour tour of the vast Western Treatment Plant (WTP) at Werribee, which is renowned for its world-class birdwatching.

Melbourne Birding Tours and Firetail Birdwatching Tours are the two operators licensed to traverse the 11,000-hectare site – where 50 per cent of Melbourne’s sewage is treated – as part of a pilot program for birdwatching group tourism.

Melbourne Water, which runs the treatment plant, says it’s a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention. It has 284 species and tens of thousands of birds, some winging in from as far as Siberia.

From bird-watching to snake-watching: The tiger snake Lisa and Stephen Featherstone spotted in Bairnsdale.

Tom Hurst, manager for environment at WTP, said the number of tour groups may be expanded in future.

“We are trying to actively develop the visitation part of WTP, and one way is to trial some eco-tourism operators,” he said.

Hurst said there was still only “basic infrastructure” there for tourists, with one public toilet block, a paved boat ramp, and two bird hides where twitchers can observe without disturbing the stars of the show.

“We’re thinking about how we might improve things – like with viewing platforms, boardwalks, shelters,” he said.

Individual birdwatching visitor numbers are also growing. The number of applications for a two-year birdwatching pass – which costs $70, plus a $50 deposit – at WTP rose from 111 in 2010 to 564 in 2023. Some 2000 people hold passes, and applicants must do an induction course covering issues such as hazards – including snakes – and not drinking, swimming or walking in the water.

The number of applications for $20 one-day passes, designed for individual tourists, rose from 118 in 2018 to 264 in 2023.

Chris Doughty, who runs Melbourne Birding Tours with his wife Christine, said he led about three small birding tours – up to three people – each week at Victorian sites, including about one a week at WTP. He said two-thirds of his clients were from overseas.

Asked why birds come here, Doughty said they feast on the “poo soup”.

“There’s lots of nutrients found in human waste,” he said.

A pair of brolgas at Western Treatment Plant.Credit: Darrian Traynor

The Featherstones see the beauty of this place. “It was a superb day in a truly remarkable site,” Lisa said.

The couple spotted 94 species at WTP, including brolgas and a rare lorikeet. They also saw eight raptors, including white-bellied sea eagles and two wedge-tailed eagles being harassed by a black-shouldered kite.

Lisa says there is a sewage treatment plant – Tophill Low – about 24 kilometres from where she and Stephen live in East Yorkshire, where there is “an amazing diversity of birds” such as ducks, geese swans and waders.

Across the Victorian sites on this trip – spanning from Cape Otway, to Woodlands Park near Melbourne Airport, to East Gippsland – Stephen has noted down 150 species including the bell miner, long-billed corella and gang-gang cockatoo.

Lisa said birding was an excuse to go to out-of-the way places.

“It gives you some amazing, fantastic experiences, with people, places and the environment,” she said.

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