Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

What do you think of the walled section of Forest Creek from the old footbridge at the bottom of Andrews street (Ten Foot bridge) downstream to the Pyrenees highway at Barker street?

Castlemaine Landcare have embarked on a collaborative project to revitalise this section of the creek. The intention is to ‘to create a more natural form for the creek as it flows between the historic walls and to provide opportunities for people to enjoy a rich natural environment by improving water quality, habitat, amenity and access.’

Forest Creek in flood downstream of the Wheeler Street bridge, February 2011: the project aims to improve public amenity and natural values without damaging the channel’s flood carrying capacity.

You can have a say in this project: click here to access the online consultation. The process is open till June 17

Previous investigations into the creek have recommended the following outcomes for any project:

• the historic stone walls are maintained
• flood carrying capacity is maintained and there is no increased flood risk
• there is no increased fire risk
• community amenity is enhanced.

These recommendations are supported by Mount Alexander Shire Council’s Castlemaine Urban Waterways Management Plan (2018).

Partners in the current project are Mount Alexander Shire Council, North Central Catchment Management Authority, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, Dja Dja Wurrung Enterprises trading as Djandak, and Friends of Campbells Creek.

Representatives of local enviro groups met with the DELWP Strategic Fuel Breaks team in the Muckleford forest last week to look at the break proposed along Bells Lane track. This will run from from Muckleford School Rd (east) to Roberts Rd (west)–see the map below. It will be 8 metres wide, on the north side of the road only. It roughly duplicates a wider fuel management corridor in past fire operations plans.

Vegetation in the break will be mulched to between 10 and 30 centimetres; it’s proposed to mulch again in 5 years.

The purpose of the meeting was to identify areas of ecological or cultural significance for exclusion. Vegetation along the track varies from extremely sparse to very healthy. Patches of this healthy vegetation were noted by the team, and we are assured they will be excluded from the mulching exercise.

As we’ve reported before, FOBIF has no problem in principle with fuel breaks around settlements. Breaks through forest areas are more problematic, and the potential for damage to high quality vegetation is more serious. These exercises illustrate the difficulty of achieving fire safety ends without damaging the environment.

So far, the fuel breaks team has shown an impressive attention to detail in the planning of these breaks. One of the key factors in this process is the skill and commitment of the works crews. We are assured that in this project the contractors are fully briefed. Bell’s Lane will be an interesting test, and will be a bit of a rehearsal for the proposed work through the Fryers Forest, where the potential for a horrific scar through high quality biodiversity is very real.

Works on the break are due to start in June.

A small group of heroes tackled FOBIF’s May walk, in spite of unfriendly weather forecasts and a slightly forbidding walk description, which piled threat on threat: climbs, creek crossings, fallen logs and loads of gorse.

All participants survived this grim prognosis, however, and the excursion into the less travelled end of the Tarilta gorge delivered rewards definitely worth the effort, including impressive valley walls and good displays of fungi. The valley floor features magnificent Candlebarks, and there’s an unusually wild atmosphere in this corner of bushland.  The weather was mild throughout. The gorse, though predictably annoying, proved to be a paper tiger, albeit a prickly one. OK, that’s a mixed metaphor, probably. In any case, it’s worth pointing out that the infestation of Tarilta Creek by gorse, from Mount Franklin down, is quite scandalous. Though at its worst at the south end, the weed is gradually getting worse through the valley, and it would be good to think that DELWP had some kind of strategy to deal with it.

The walk route traversed areas in which dense regrowth of Messmates and Wattles, almost certainly outcomes of the 2012 management burn, blocked out entire gullies.

Our thanks to walk leader Bernard Slattery, although he made several predictions of disaster which failed to eventuate.

The June walk will be led by Christine Henderson in the Fryers Forest. Check the program for details.

FOBIF’s May walk will tackle the Tarilta creek valley from the Sawpit Track end, the starting point being  about a 30 minute drive from Castlemaine.

This is the less travelled end of the valley: there’ll be steep ascents and descents, uneven ground, possible wet creek crossings, fallen logs to traverse, and some annoying gorse to negotiate–but, of course, it’ll all be worth it. About 7kms. See the walks page for more general details.  More info: Bernard Slattery 0499 624 160

Mount Alexander Shire Council’s budget provides an opportunity to influence Council on what citizens would like it to spend money on (and/or avoid spending money on).

The draft 2022-23 budget went before Council at its meeting on 19 April, and residents and ratepayers are invited to send in submissions on the budget up until 5pm 11 May.  The submissions will be considered at a council meeting on 24 May and the budget adopted at a meeting on 21 June.

If residents don’t tell staff and councillors we think weed removal and other ways of helping natural ecosystems survive and flourish are important, they won’t know, and are more likely to prioritise squeakier wheels.

The draft budget can be found here.

Paper copies can be requested at the council offices.  Its many pages don’t give detail about how much money has been spent and is proposed to be spent on Natural Environment and how the money is divided up.  But that need not deter residents from making general submissions:  in the past Council has acted favourably on general budget requests by submitters asking for more money for removing environmental weeds, and the hours of the Natural Environment Officer to be increased to full time.  Submissions don’t have to be long–one paragraph would be OK.

Submitters will also have an opportunity to address the council budget meeting on 24 May.  This is very worthwhile, as it can increase the impact of submissions by helping submitters’ ideas stand out from all the paperwork councillors have to read.

Submissions can be sent to info@mountalexander.vic.gov.au.

A project is under way to install new visitor information points along the Goldfields Track.

The project involves 4 visitor hubs, 8 trail headboards, and up to 100 interpretive signs along the 200+ kilometre length of the track between Ballarat and Bendigo. Consultants are currently working on the design of the project with Goldfields Track inc and Djandak, the  commercial arm of Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation.

If you’re a bit unnerved by the idea of ‘100 interpretive signs’ along the track (that would be a sign about every 2 kilometres!), so are we. However, we are assured first, that this number might be ‘only’ 75, and second, that the signs might be simple QR codes on posts. By applying a phone to the Code, visitors would be able to read off info about natural and cultural features of the point in question.

Think authorities can’t go a bit bonkers with unnecessary signs? Think again. Of course, we don’t think the present project will make this sort of mistake.

The potential value of this project is obvious, and the Djandak involvement in the project should ensure some balance is restored to the interpretation of our bushlands, too often weighted to a glorification, or sentimentalisation of gold fever.

FOBIF is watching this project with great interest. 

First, we don’t want a proliferation of signs to disturb the serenity of those parts of the Diggings park most notable for their feeling of abandonment and isolation. Parts of our bushland are already cluttered with unnecessary or out of date signs, a clutter which definitely does not add to the ‘natural’ experience.

FOBIF walkers taking a rest, Sebastopol Gully: parts of the Diggings park would be spoiled by an excess of signage.

Second, we believe that any serious explanation of the goldfields landscape should include information about the destructive effects of the gold rush. Any visitor to our region must be struck by the number of eroded waterways and clearly degraded land. Any signage offering information about the region must include an explanation as to how this happened, and a sober account of what happens when rampant pursuit of wealth overrides all other concerns.

Brown’s Gully near the Goldfields Track crossing: the innumerable degraded streams in our region are part of the price we have paid for gold. Explanations of these landscape features should be provided in the relevant places.

The consultants’ approaches to these questions seem constructive. One question about the project is still not clear to us, however: the role of Parks Victoria. The Goldfields Track traverses significant parks in this region, and Parks Victoria is supposed to have a major role in community education on the value of these lands. In recent years, Parks seems to be more interested in tourism than in education. We’ll see what constructive input PV might have in this project.

DELWP completed its management burn at Kemp’s Track in the Fryers Nature Conservation reserve in the last week of March. It was one of four significant department fires in this region.

We had a look at the site on April 11. It’s hard to get an overall sense of a 260 hectare site, in which the impact of fire varied from very severe to very mild, with some areas untouched.

We have two distinct impressions of the fire zone, however:

First, that, as is common in these cases, large trees have been felled as a result of the fire. This is not supposed to happen.

Unusually large habitat trees felled as a result of the Kemps Track burn. One of these is a Swamp Gum, unusual in this region.

Large trees victims of the burn. The very big Yellow Box in the centre may survive.

Second, areas which we supposed to be low fuel zones—for example, grassy riparian zones—were burned. We don’t see the point of this.

Mossy creekline burned in the fire. We were curious about its fate–see our March 28 post. This area did not need ‘fuel reduction’.

What is the Department’s view of these two questions? According to the Code, it should be publicly available.

So: what was the exact fire coverage at Kemp’s track? And what ecological positives and negatives were achieved in the exercise?

The Code of Practice requires that

‘Monitoring programs will also focus on:

• mapping the extent and severity of bushfires and planned burns‘ [paragraph 212] [FOBIF emphasis]

It also requires that

‘The Department will make publicly accessible information about:

• the performance of its bushfire management actions, and the status of achievements of strategies and objectives
• information gained from monitoring and evaluation activities’ [Paragraph 222]

Therefore it should be possible to get an exact idea of how the exercise fulfilled one of the two major aims of fire management exercises:

• ‘To maintain or improve the resilience of natural ecosystems and their ability to deliver services such as biodiversity, water, carbon storage and forest products.’

Unfortunately the Code doesn’t specify precisely what ‘publicly accessible’ means—and, in practice, it doesn’t seem to mean much at all. It should mean: the ‘information should be published on DELWP websites.’

FOBIF will make enquiries to the Department, and report on the results.