Stormwater drains in some of the most prominent areas of the Canberra suburb have recently been painted in a bid to make residents more conscious of what goes into nearby catchments.

The initiative came after the Oaks Estate Progress Association received a $500 grant from the Molonglo Catchment Group to help improve catchment health.

The association’s secretary, Hugh Griffin, said the recent grant has been a chance for streets in the suburb to undergo beautification with public art.

“We wanted to broaden and share the H20K message within residents in Oaks Estate, but it was also a good chance to beautify the suburb as well,” Mr Griffin said.

“We had been thinking about putting environmental messages on stormwater drains similar to what other countries have done.”

As part of the initiative, Oaks Estate artist Corinne Zhang was approached to design and also paint the murals.

Mr Griffin said while similar schemes have been set up near Garema Place in Civic, the designs for the murals in Oaks Estate had a local touch to them, featuring many native platypuses. 

“We wanted to tailor the message to the context of the community,” he said. “There’s many platypuses around Oaks Estate, so there’s lots of local relevance.”

The designs sporting the environmental message to not dump things down the drain were placed in prominent areas in the suburb, including near Gillespie Park and along George Street.

The association’s secretary said it was important to put the murals in areas that would reach the most amount of people.

“We made sure that we picked those prime locations as the sites for the messaging. We couldn’t do every drain in Oaks Estate, so we picked sites with the most foot traffic,” Mr Griffin said.

In the short space of time the murals have been around, he said there had already been a noticeable difference, a sign the message was getting through.

“Straight away we have noticed less rubbish on the street,” he said.