Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

New Edition: Vagabond, the Story of Charles Sanger

Posted on 18 May, 2026 by fobif

Front cover

A new edition Vagabond, the Story of Charles Sanger will be launched by local author Robyn Annear at 12pm this Saturday (23 May) in the Castlemaine library foyer. The book was first written in 2008 by Bernard Slattery, Doug Ralph and Deirdre Slattery and published by Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests.

Due to continued interest in the book, FOBIF decided on a new edition this year, when the first one sold out after 18 years. With a new cover and layout, the 2026 version fleshes out some of the stranger themes in the story and suggests that Sanger’s case was not an isolated one.

The Sanger story

The book is the story of a Fryerstown man, Charles Sanger (1880-1953).

‘He was a dashing but elusive character. Journalists called him the Fryers Bushranger, but he never held up anyone with a gun, and the gun he did have never worked anyway.

He served time in jail, but was well liked by ordinary people. He was one of the last of the bush hermits, and his story is also the story of the changing bush, of a time lost in history, and of a quiet country community that looked after its own.’

Everyone is welcome at the launch and refreshments will be provided. Vagabond will be available for sale for $20. You will also be able to buy if at Stonemans Bookroom and the Castlemaine Vistors Information Centre.

You can find out more about the book and details of how to purchase it online here.

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Sunday walk on Salters Creek, Irishtown

Posted on 18 May, 2026 by fobif

Sunday 17 May, Elaine Bayes lead a great 5.6 km walk along Salters Creek, a small but remarkably intact tributary of the Loddon River, close to Columbine Creek, and ultimately part of the vast Murray–Darling Basin — a catchment covering more than one million square kilometres.

What makes waterways like Salters Creek so important is that much of the Murray–Darling Basin produces very little runoff into waterways. In fact, around 86% of the basin has effectively zero runoff, with most river flows generated in the upper Victorian tributaries. Small creeks such as this play a disproportionately important role in sustaining the broader river system.

In addition, the overhanging trees and vegetation produces a vast amount of food in the form of leaves and twigs (carbon) which kicks off the food web within the Loddon and Murray river much further down stream.

Eight people braved the rainy conditions to take part in the walk — mostly the stalwarts, amazing leaders, and drivers of the Friends of the Box-Ironbark group. Despite the weather, the walk revealed an incredible diversity of life and habitat.

The creekline appears to support Creekline Grassy Woodland vegetation, with some large trees approaching benchmark condition, offering a glimpse of what these landscapes may once have looked like before widespread clearing and alteration. The understory remains surprisingly intact and diverse.

One of the highlights was the series of small pools still holding water despite the dry conditions. These ponds were lined with rushes, reeds, and sedges, providing important refuge habitat for insects, birds, kangaroos and many other species. We also saw many remarkable fungi, while numerous bird species called throughout the walk, adding to the atmosphere of the creek environment.

Bibrons Toadlet, Pseudophrene bibronii were calling for the full length of creek, males calling and currently guarding eggs and waiting for rain events like this to distribute their babies downstream.

The walk also passed the old wooden trestle siphon, a fascinating historic structure once used to transport water across the gully.

The full walk took around 2 1/2 hours, and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in local ecology, history, and the resilience of these small but incredibly significant waterways.
Written by Elaine Bayes.
Thanks to Liz Martin and Euan Moore for the photos.
To read more about the Loddon Race, Steve Charman’s blog is excellent https://fieldrambling.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-loddon-company-channel-walking.html

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Town Open Day

Posted on 18 May, 2026 by fobif

We had a terrific day on Saturday, lots of chats and folk signing up as members,to our blog, and our special open day walk. We are in the process of doing the paperwork and hope to finish this week. Please email us if you haven’t heard from us (info@fobif.org.au). One person by the name Bissett signed up as a member and we can’t find your details, so if this is you (or if you know this person) please get in touch!

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Plants, posters, threatened species and more; head on down to the Town Open Day Saturday

Posted on 11 May, 2026 by fobif

Come down and chat to us, there are giveaways, you can sign up for a walk on the Monk, learn what threatened species are near you, learn how to use the iNaturalist and FrogID apps. We will have our books for sale. There is a lot of local environmental information both from us and Connecting Country, with whom we are sharing a stall.

10am-2pm Saturday 16th May in the Goods Shed in Kennedy Street near the railway station. (relocated from the Botanic Gardens because of rain forcast).

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Salters Creek, Irishtown walk on Sunday

Posted on 11 May, 2026 by fobif

Salters Creek waterfall 2010, Bernard Slattery

Salters Creek Flume. Bernard Slattery

17 May Salters Creek

(Note the change of location from the original description.)

This is a lovely section of Salters Creek, as it has signs of an intact creek bed and large trees which is rare to find in this region. It is a 5-6 km walk and there will be some ups and downs to access the creek, including off-track walking.

Walk leader is Elaine Bayes (0431 959 085). General enquiries, Gen Blades (0431 371 065).

Meet at the Community House at 9.30am or at the junction of Irishtown track and Vaughan-Chewton Road at 9.45am.

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VFA Green Fire-Walls Webinar

Posted on 27 April, 2026 by fobif

You might be interested in this webinar about what green fire-walls can do. Link to register.

Green Fire-Walls: A VFA Webinar

About the webinar

VFA have a webinar coming up with Angelique Stefanatos who developed the Green Fire-Walls project back in 2019 with a Gippsland Landcare Grant. This project came out of Angelique’s experience of severe respiratory illness and the impact of ‘planned burns on her health and welfare. It took 2 years to research and develop the fire-walls ‘toolkit’, which was then distributed to Gippsland Landcare groups and has now been picked up and adapted in other states.

Hear Angelique describe this critical project for how we educate ourselves and others about how to understand fire and forests:

What is a green fire-wall & why this project was created
Green Fire-Wall design for farms and roadside reserves and importance of native vegetation in the landscape
Fire-wise garden design using rainforest as inspiration
Concerns about planned burns and their failure to prevent wildfires, their risks to human health, as well as their threats to biodiversity
And some indigenous perspectives

Presenter Bio

Angelique Stefanatos grew up in the suburbs of Melbourne and studied Biological Sciences to become a zoologist. Her career and life were seriously impacted when she contracted a serious lung disease which left her with life-long reduced lung capacity. After moving to the Northern Territory fort her dream job at the Alice Springs Desert Park, Angelique moved back to Victoria and settled near Lakes Entrance on a Trust For Nature property.

In 2015, having never experienced a Victorian planned burn before, she was unprepared for the fire that was lit along her boundary line, which smouldered all night, creating thick smoke and settling in her valley, nearly asphyxiating her while she slept. (Angelique calls herself ‘the human canary’ when it comes to being a living air quality monitor, due to her reduced lung capacity.)

This incident was devastating on her health and took months to recover, but was nothing compared to the emotional trauma and eco-anxiety she experienced in 2017, when Forest Fire Management Victoria cleared many linear kilometres of roadside vegetation on her doorstep, including recorded Greater Glider habitat. This was the ‘last straw’ for Angelique, and she deeply experienced what Professor Glenn Albrecht calls ‘Solastalgia’: the loss of solace and subsequent nostalgia for the environment to go back to how it was before a destructive event.

Angelique tried everything to stop the roadside clearing, including meetings with fire-managers and local politicians, newspaper articles, radio interviews, letters to state politicians and finally a mini blockade, but it was futile. Up until then she had felt ‘at one’ with her local environment, but due to of her sense of powerlessness, she experienced the 2017 roadside destruction of her plant and animal companions as a devastating soul-trauma, and found it more unbearable than the physical asphyxiation from the smoke in 2015.

The phrase she heard parroted back repeatedly from the fire managers was: “The public want more burning to feel safe.” So this is when she realised that she would have to create a non-threatening tool to help educate farmers, home gardeners and the general public, to help change the narrative. And that’s how the Green Fire-Walls project was born, thanks to a Landcare grant in 2019. It took 2 years to produce the fire-walls ‘toolkit’, which was then distributed to Gippsland Landcare groups and has now been picked up and adapted in other states.

WHEN: April 30, 2026 at 6:30pm – 7:30pm

WHERE: Online

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Finding some hidden treasures in our woodlands by Dr Lawrie Conole.

Posted on 20 April, 2026 by fobif

Powerful Owl at Clydesdale photographed by Newstead Landcare President Patrick Kavanagh

Newstead Landcare presentation Tuesday April 21st

It’s easy to see and notice a lot of our wildlife: Magpies, Kangaroos, Fairy-wrens and so on. But a lot of our wildlife only emerges at night, often in locations that few people if any visit after dark. What might dwell undiscovered in our species-rich woodlands? Field ecologist and life-long bird observer, Dr Lawrie Conole has been checking out some of our woodlands and forests with some special recording devices and has made some remarkable discoveries. As a bird watcher, Lawrie focuses on the fine detail of birdlife, as an ecologist, he studies the big picture of our ecosystems, so he is well placed to tie his observations into understanding of our ecosystems’ complexity and how they are faring. He’s going to talk about the recording process, his findings and some of the implications at Newstead Landcare’s presentation on Tuesday April 21st. Don’t miss this opportunity to find out about some of our fascinating and cryptic wildlife. The presentation will be at Newstead Community Centre and start at 7.30 pm. All are welcome to attend, gold coin donations appreciated.

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Stoneman’s Bookroom book launch-Power, Prosperity & Planet: Climate & Energy Policy for All.

Posted on 20 April, 2026 by fobif

Sunday 3 May at 12.45pm

Thom is a Senior International Fellow with the Smart Energy Council. He played a key role in securing the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015, has since worked as chief of staff to former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd; for the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade in Washington, DC; and at the Asia Society in New York, where he forged a backchannel for US–China climate talks.

Simon Holmes à Court has helped 12 pro-climate independents (known as the Teals) get elected to Parliament across Australia through the foundation of Climate 200, is an energy analyst, clean-tech investor, climate philanthropist, and director of the Smart Energy Council and the Australian Environmental Grantmakers Network. He was co-founder of the Australian Wind Alliance and inaugural chair of the Melbourne Energy Institute’s Advisory Board.

Very limited space so come early. Stoneman’s Bookroom, 101 Mostyn St Castlemaine Dja Dja Wurrung Country.

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Muckleford Gorge Walk April 19th 2026

Posted on 20 April, 2026 by fobif

Muckleford Map-Clive Wilman

On a perfect (except for the lack of rain) autumn day walkers arrived in convoy on a private property to learn about the geological history of the Muckleford Gorge from geologist Clive Willman, assisted by Ross Cayley from the Geological Survey of Victoria. While Clive told the story of 480 million year old sediments being laid down in a deep ocean, then subsequently being crushed by sideways pressure, which folded them into tight parallel folds and raised them to form land. The walkers marvelled at the spiky rocks sticking vertically out of the ground at the top of a very steep-sided valley, the Muckleford Creek far below. Ross added the even bigger picture story, of tectonic plates and convection currents moving over the earth’s surface as the driving forces behind the movements. The descent to the creek led to a site where Clive introduced a main player in the gorge’s story – the Muckleford Fault, formed during the period of intense folding and still active today. We observed rocks that lay in the Fault’s zone of influence, showing cleavage features that cut across the sedimentary layers, and learnt this was in the Fault’s hanging wall. The mystery deepened. A delightful walk beside the creek led to a large grassy mound where morning tea was enjoyed, while Clive opened our eyes to the fact that we were sitting on the debris from a large landslide. Part of the valley side had broken away and slid downhill. More material could be seen on the far bank. Clive speculated that this was the result of an earthquake brought about by a large movement of the Fault. By this time people were aware that the far side of the valley was composed of basalt lava that had flowed along the old valley a few million years ago, shifting the creek to its present position. A further walk along an open valley floor, a creek crossing, then a traverse of steep ground brought us to a large mullock heap on the hillside. Here Clive spoke about the gold-bearing gravels that lay in the ancient creek, before the basalt covered it, and methods used by miners to exploit it. A final descent to the creek led to a grassy bank with convenient shade for lunch, before a long steep ascent back to the cars. The view from the top, as we emerged onto flat, open ground was magnificent and a final stretch through open woodland was a fitting end to a very special experience. Grateful thanks to owners Ian and his mother, and to our expert guide Clive Willman. You can read the walk notes here.

Christine Henderson

Thanks to Liz Martin for the photos