2. Thankyou to all members of the Warrambungle Environmental Education Centre for running this excursion. Thankyou also to Meg Leathart for providing all the equipment and her skills to help us.

3. We needed to learn how to: Correctly Identify and tally numbers of collected bugs. Work out the health and running speed of the water in the river.

4. We went down to the Namoi River near Cohen's Bridge in Gunnedah.

5. We Used numerous equipment including: Nets Buckets Sorting Trays Magnifying Glass Water Bug Guide Recording Sheet

6. Gumboots/Enclosed Shoes Hat Sunscreen Long Pants

7. We collected samples from different habitudinal areas such as: Rapid Running areas Riffles Edge waters Calm areas Muddy and murky waters

8. Deeper and slower moving waters held specific bugs and quick moving waters held others. Fast Movers (beetles and skimmers) Bottom dwellers (worms and sea larvae) We caught them by stirring up the water and waving our nets through the murky water.

9. We used the Water Bug Guide and magnifying glass to inspect and identify the numerous bugs and critters caught. We then tallied the bugs and numbers on the Recording Sheet with the:  Sensitivity  Weight  Bug type

11. Very TolerantTolerantSensitiveVery Sensitive 12345678910 Mayfly Nymph 14 Stonefly Nymph 2 Freshwater Crayfish 1 Whirligig Beetle And larvae 16 Freshwater Shrimp 14 Freshwater Mussel 5 Beetle Larva 1 Dragonfly Nymph 1 Water Strider 1 Diving Beetle 6 Water Boatmen 45 Freshwater Worm 2 Bloodworm 1 Total 114

12.  Stream Pollution Index = Total (SR x WF) Total WF SPI= 125 32 SP= 3.9

13. Near 120 bugs were collected over a vast range of species. The Stream Pollution index was calculated at near 4.0. The Stream Quality is rated at fair at the study site.