Arriving at the location
- All events need to be COVID-safe. Make sure to follow the current health guidelines in your state.
- Designate a central meeting place for the group for the day and sign people in as they arrive.
Welcome everyone
- Start the event by acknowledging the Country you’re meeting on. If you’re not sure you can check that here.
- You might like to share a bit about yourself, the area, and the platy-project.
- Optional extra: do a name round of the group to acquaint participants with each other.
Brief participants on how to search for a platypus
- Use the tips in this toolkit to explain what to look out for and how to record findings.
- If people spread themselves along the waterway, ask them to note down the time that they observe a platypus. This can help determine if it was the same animal that participants saw as it traveled through the waterway.
Start searching!
Encourage people to spread themselves out at intervals along the waterway to have the best chance of seeing a platypus, and allow between 30 minutes to an hour for people to survey.
Share what you’ve seen
Once everyone meets back at home-base, go around and ask people to share what they saw, even if they didn’t get to see a platypus. Double check everyone has good records of what they saw.
This is the perfect time to bust out a platy-picnic.
Wrap and follow up
- Thank your guests for coming, and remember to take a group photo! You might like to upload your photo to social media using the hashtag #PlatyProject
- Later that day, send an email to attendees thanking them for their time, and remind them to upload the results of their platypus sightings to http://platy-project.acf.org.au/. This is a nice place to include the group photo you took, and perhaps invite them to your next event too!