2023 FOBIF 25 years show

As part of our lead up to the FOBIF 25 years show, Mike Evans has sent us these photos about an area of bush that has special significance to him.

‘Tortured’ trees in the Harcourt Bushland Reserve

I live in Peelers Road Barkers Creek and the Harcourt Bushland Reserve is an area that I walk in every day.

Chopped down, Dug up and Dumped on, is the saying that Barkers Creek Landcare Group president Daryl Colless uses to describe the recovering goldfield site that is now called the Harcourt Bushland Reserve.

Its piece of land that has been turned over probably more than once since the arrival of the first prospectors in the late 1800s. You can see the evidence of mining everywhere, from holes both square and round, bare ground, stripped of any nutritious soil, large excavations leaving scars on the landscape and evidence of the last area in the district to give up sluicing because of the silt flowing into and degrading Barkers Creek.

However, nature has remarkable powers of recovery and even though it’s a struggle this area of bush shows its resilience with many species of wildflowers, birds and fauna.

Trees that look tortured have survived to provide habitat for the birds insects and fauna here.

The Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo passes through here regularly. Certain areas put on colourful displays of wildflowers and it is home to a number of wallabies and kangaroos. (Mike Evans)