Despite being a no-camping area, Black Diamond Lake was a popular attraction for campers visiting Collie over the Australia Day long weekend.
However, with no toilet facilities at the lake and a limited number of rubbish bins, the area was left in a bad state once campers left.
Local resident Dee O’Brien organised a community clean-up of the area surrounding the lake over the weekend.
Around 10 people from the area went out to the lake on Sunday, January 28, and donated a couple of hours of their time to collect rubbish, with everything from glass bottles to mattresses littered around the lake.
“Black Diamond is a really nice place,” Ms O’Brien said.
“No one owns it in a sense, and if we, as locals, don’t step up and make it an attractive place, Collie misses out on tourists who spend their money in town.
“As a town, I think we need to ask people to take ownership and perhaps put some more pressure on the Department of Mines to provide some toilet facilities here and more rubbish collection.”
There was also a second clean-up of the area around Black Diamond organised on Wednesday, January 31.
Organiser Leonie Scoffern said about 20 members of the community turned up to help clean the environment and between them they collected six loads of rubbish for the tip.
She said the volunteers had collected discarded items such as a mattress, a microwave, a bonnet and windscreen from a car, clothing and inflatable toys, along with cigarette butts and toilet paper.
