Nine Panorama Football Club players removed about 300 kilograms of rubbish from the river between the low-level bridge on Hereford Street and the Denison bridges.

Organiser Arthur Meek said the group combed the riverbanks and also removed rubbish from inside the river. 

“Most of the weight was in the 6 shopping trolleys we removed from inside the river and surrounds,” Mr Meek said.

“There was also a lot of plastic and doggy poop bags but on the whole the river and banks were pretty tidy.

“While we were clearing the rubbish we talked quite a lot about Ian Kiernan and Kim McKay who came up with the very successful Clean up Australia campaign.”

Mr Kiernan had close links to the Bathurst region after restoring the historic Westham homestead near O’Connell.

The restoration was a labour of love for the keen environmentalist and he spent a lot of time in the region as the work progressed.

Mr Kiernan purchased the 1830s building at O’Connell in 2004 and spent two years restoring it, incorporating a range of environmentally-friendly features, including a total water cycle management system.

This initiative won him the Australian Water Association’s Water Environment Merit Award and he put Westham on the market in 2012.

Mr Kiernan also spent a lot of time in the region as a young boy on a farm at Raglan while his father was serving in the war.

Mr Meek said the weekend clean-up was a reminder of the region’s great natural assets.

“We all agreed we are very lucky here in Bathurst to have such amazing access to natural landscapes and mostly they are pretty clean,” he said.

“Panorama Football Club is pretty committed to making Bathurst a better place to live and we are happy to contribute to keeping the environment clean.

“This is our second Saturday clean up and everyone is keen to do it again.

“To be honest, it’s a lot of fun and we are looking for our next project.”

Panorama’s first river clean-up was held in September.It came after Mr Meek and fellow player Alex Woodhouse were walking along the riverbank one day and were shocked by the amount of rubbish they saw.