Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

Castlemaine Field Naturalists have informed us that the planned Grevillea obtecta talk and investigation walk planned for tonight and tomorrow have unfortunately had to be cancelled. Readers looking around them will not be surprised to find that the reason for the cancellation is that Georgie Custance is unable to make it to Castlemaine because of flood blockages on the roads. Our apologies.

Here’s a good reason to make it into the Bendigo CBD: go to the library! OK, there are libraries elsewhere in the region, but the one in the CBD has a trump card right now. It’s an aquarium, more than three metres wide, celebrating Bendigo Creek: not the gutter prominent in the city, but the creek as might have been…and could be? The aquarium features more than a dozen species of native freshwater creatures, and is a bit of a wonder.

Part of the aquarium celebrating Bendigo Creek…the view is even better under the water.

The creek’s history is an environmental horror story: if you haven’t seen it, check out the late Gerry Gill’s short history in his ‘The map and remembrance’ film series. You can find it here or here.

Gerry’s film compare’s the idyllic images we have of the creek before the gold rush with the depredations of the golden age, and celebrates the efforts of landcarers and managers trying to restore the creek. The aquarium is not only an eye opener for what it shows of under water life, it offers a bit more motivation to ‘care for country’.

The locally endemic Fryerstown Grevillea (Grevillea obtecta). is common in small areas of our region, but it’s not widespread and is subject to threats. This week the Castlemaine Field Naturalists are running two sessions encouraging citizens to participate in programs to monitor the plant, helping biologists to assess its true status and the need for recovery actions to enable it to persist in the wild.

First, at the Club’s monthly meeting, ecologist Georgie Custance will talk on monitoring the plant using the Proofsafe monitoring app. The meeting is at 7.30 this Friday the 14th, at the Uniting Church Fellowship room in Lyttleton Street Castlemaine. Want to check out the app first? Check here.

Second, Georgie Custance will lead a walk in the bush to visit some local populations of this wonderful species as well as the many other native plants that are flowering at the moment. During the walk Georgie will demonstrate how to use ProofSafe to record your sightings of Fryerstown Grevillea so that people can practice what they learnt at the meeting.  Location to be confirmed but either Fryers Ridge or Porcupine Ridge.

Meet: 1.30 pm at the Octopus (Duke St, opposite the Castle Motel). Bring:  Water, afternoon tea, sturdy shoes, hat and if possible, your mobile phone or tablet with the ProofSafe app. loaded. Enquiries: castlemainefnc@hotmail.com

Alex Panelli will lead our last walk for the year in the Fryers Ridge area on Sunday 16 October. Details about this walk can be found here and Alex will post further information in a later on this site.

The FOBIF Committee has drawn up a set of commonsense guidelines for all our walks. You can view them here.

Pam Connell has just sent us these two terrific photos of the last walk in the Muckleford Nature Conservation Reserve.

Nodding Greenhood, Muckleford. Photo Pam Connell

The group on the last leg of the walk after the rain had set in.

A strong turnout at FOBIF’s AGM last Monday heard a tantalising talk and photo presentation by Patrick Kavanagh  on things you can see through macro photography. The spectacular images of tiny creatures inhabiting our flora—and each other—underlined the importance to our ecosystem of forms of life most of us know nothing about, and some of which are completely unknown to science. These tiny creatures are the foundation food of much of our more visible natural world: if ever you’ve wondered what those small birds are doing fussing around a wattle bud, Patrick’s photos gave a very strong clue. And if you’ve been frustrated by the ability of a house fly to veer miraculously fast away from your attempted swat, the photos revealed all!

Midge fossiking on a Wattle bud…There are epics going on in tiny places. Photo by Patrick Kavanagh

Patrick’s presentation recalled memories of Sarah Lloyd’s amazing talk on slime moulds at the 2015 AGM: in both cases, the audience was introduced into a mysterious world which we share, most of the time completely unaware of it.

Here are a few more glimpses into that world:

Praying Mantis nymph: photo by Patrick Kavanagh

Continue reading →

La Nina is rolling on, and maybe we’re in danger of forgetting what it’s like when the country is turning to dust! Solid rain last week brought sights we’ve seen intermittently, but not too often in the last twenty odd years: including rivers in spate.

Have a look at the photos below, of the Coliban river upstream of the Gibbons bridge. The normally placid (or maybe tamed?) stream, cut in two by the Malmsbury/Upper Coliban dam system, found a bit of high energy last week. The levels weren’t as high as some of the epic flows of the past, but they were pretty impressive, and the waterfalls and rapids both on the river and its tributary Granite Creek put on a mighty roar.

If you want to know a bit more about this short (by world standards) but wonderful river, check out Along the Coliban, a journey through landscape and time, by Brian Coman, with photos by Harry Oldmeadow. The book is a collection of insights and reflections on social, historical and environmental themes. Coman, who grew up in the country of the upper Coliban, offers a very personal view of the river, packed with fascinating info and occasionally provocative views. We don’t have the space to do justice to a book which has a crack at subjects as diverse as murder and biodiversity, but here’s a sample passage to give an idea of its quality:

‘An upper catchment with poor retention also means less groundwater. Picture…the original condition of the upper catchment: heavily timbered, and with a great deal of bark, sticks, twigs and dead leaves forming a blanket on the ground below the trees and understorey shrubs. When heavy rain arrives, it is first arrested by the leaf canopy, thus breaking its velocity. When it does hit the surface it must first penetrate the layer of surface litter before percolating into the actual soil. This is a much gentler and longer lived percolation than that occurring on bare or thinly vegetated soil and much more water is delivered to the water table and hence, to the river itself.’

Now that’s a view of leaf litter we can subscribe to.

The Annual General Meeting of Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests will be held in the Ray Bradfield Room at 7.30 next Monday. This meeting room is in Victory Park, Castlemaine with access from the IGA carpark or Mostyn Street. The guest speaker will be Patrick Kavanagh on the topic of Photographing Nature. Everyone is welcome and refreshments will be provided. Check our earlier post for more details.