Earthworks and tree-planting are giving a Mossman farmer “peace of mind” leading up to the wet season.

Carmen Henning-White and husband Trevor White found ravaged creek lines when they inspected their property after floods in early 2018, with chunks of creek bank torn away and large trees swept into the floodwaters.

“We’d had erosion on the farm before, through the creek, but nothing like that,’’ Ms Henning-White said. “We lost three to four metres off banks, it was all just gone.”

The Whites are one of five Mossman families whose properties are being worked on to stabilise creekbanks and improve their resilience to future rainfall events, thanks to Terrain NRM’s Mossman Integrated Catchment Repair Project funded through the Queensland Government’s Natural Resources Investment Program.

Terrain NRM’s Ruginia Duffy said two sites had been repaired on the White’s property. She said “rock toes” were built in the streambed, embankments were reshaped and trees, shrubs and grasses planted.

“With the rate and level of erosion, combining earthworks and revegetation is the way to hold these streambanks together for the long-term,” she said.

“The rock structures are designed to protect the bank while the trees establish.”

The iconic Daintree River is under repair after floodwaters caused erosion in its lower reaches.

Tree-planting and earthworks have strengthened the river’s banks near the Daintree Village, where land washed away in record floods in recent years.

Terrain NRM’s Jen Mackenzie said almost 9000 young plants were now helping to stabilise the bank along two stretches of eroded land, where rockwork is the new foundations.

“There was nothing left to hold the soil in place in these sections,’’ she said. “The vegetation had been washed away and the erosion was only getting worse.”

Terrain NRM has been working with landholders and contractors on Disaster Relief Funding projects, jointly funded by the Australian and Queensland governments under the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements (DRFA).

Grazier Barry Osborne is one of a number of landholders in the Daintree region whose river frontage has been part of the project. Mr Osborne said big floods had taken their toll on riverside land in the Daintree’s lower reaches.

“With two record floods in the last four or five years, the river has cut into the land,’’ he said. “There was a 10m-high bank here years ago but there is hardly any bank at all now and the river has moved in about 30m, creating big washouts.

“This is loamy, sandy soil so floods knock the country around badly.”

Gerard Puglisi’s creek-side cane land in Mossman was washed away in the 2018 floods. Now he is banking on a combination of rocks and trees to better prepare him for future wet seasons.

Earthworks began this week at Mr Puglisi’s farm as part of a project to stabilise the banks of waterways in the Saltwater Creek catchment, through revegetation and engineered construction work.

Terrain NRM’s Ruginia Duffy said ‘rock toes’ – or structures that armour the lower section of streambanks – were being built along the water’s edge while the upper section was reshaped to reduce the slope and allow for tree planting.

“With the rate and level of erosion, combining earthworks and revegetation is the way to hold these streambanks together for the long-term,” she said. “The rock structures are designed to protect the bank while the trees establish.”

The project is one of two on the Puglisi property, and it follows similar work on three other Mossman farms over the past year.

Mr Puglisi said 20m of streambank on a dog-leg section of creek was repaired several weeks ago and the current project was on an S-bend that now included an island.

“The areas were gouged out in the flood and they’ve been eroding into the headland,’’ he said.

“There is more gouging every time it floods – if we can stop the erosion, we can protect our land and there is also less chance of topsoil ending up in the waterways and going out to the Reef.”

The work is part of the Mossman Integrated Catchment Repair Project, delivered by Terrain NRM and funded by the Queensland Government’s Natural Resources Investment Program.