Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

Engage Victoria is running a new consultation, this one being on litter and rubbish dumping in regional areas, including Mount Alexander shire.

The consultation involves a questionnaire of 34 questions, and will include a workshop in Bendigo on August 28. For details click here.

Forest Creek at the Wheeler Street bridge: milk and soft drink containers with an assortment of other throwaways permanently decorate the surface. Bad behaviour is one part of the rubbish problem: but the major one is the mass production of disposable stuff.

FOBIF is a little cynical about these consultations, as we pointed out in connection with the forest consultation of last year. Some people have even dubbed the process the ‘Enrage Victoria’ enterprise, because of the irrelevance or triviality of some of the questions asked.

In the current case, the questions seem irritatingly designed to make us forget that the origin of the rubbish problem is the creation, on a mass scale, of throwaway stuff. Control of the source of the problem is on the face of it more effective than trying to stem a tidal wave of junk.

Nevertheless, it might be worth having a go at the survey questions,  if only to make that point.

The picture below shows two mature Ironbarks cut down and removed from alongside the Poverty Gully track in the Diggings Park. Illegal timbergetting from public land has become a bit of a plague lately, and FOBIF has heard both from nearby residents and from rangers of what seem to be semi professional operations effectively looting the park.

Poverty Gully track, July 17: two substantial trees have been cut down, cut up and removed. The pattern has been repeated across the area adjoining Castlemaine and Campbell’s Creek

According to DELWP, ‘Under the Forest Act 1958, people who collect firewood outside designated firewood collection areas or a firewood collection season or take more than the maximum allowable amounts can face fines of up to $8,059, or a maximum penalty of one year imprisonment or both, if the matter proceeded to Court.’

We believe Parks Victoria has embarked on a new effort to tackle the problem. No details are available, and in spite of the odd arrest, the results aren’t convincing. It’s hard to supervise large areas of forest at any one time: if the infractions are of a commercial scale, the appropriate approach would seem to be to investigate outlets, as was done in the
Bendigo area successfully in May.

FOBIF has sent an objection to the Mount Alexander Shire to the displayed plans for a new supermarket at Forest and Urquhart Streets Castlemaine. The essentials of our objection are as follows:

‘We emphasise that we have no opinion on the wisdom of a second large supermarket in the town, or its location, or its design: we have to trust to the competence of council on these matters.

‘Our objection is solely related to the proposed landscape plantings for the development. In particular, I refer to pages 06-02 07-02 and 08-02 in the relevant section of the planning documents.

‘On these pages it is proposed to plant the following environmental weeds around the development:

‘Cootamundra Wattle: this is not only an Environmental Weed, which spreads into the bush, replacing indigenous plants and damaging the natural ecosystem, but it also crosses with our indigenous Silver Wattle and thus is in the process of causing Silver Wattle’s extinction in Castlemaine, because the progeny of Silver Wattles are now crosses, and therefore weeds.  It’s like letting a feral bull into a cattle breeding stud and not having a morning after pill available. Even if a “sterile cultivar” were proposed, this would look the same as the non-sterile ones and thus act as a promotion for Cootamundra Wattle, increasing its popularity with gardeners unaware of its problems.   We also question if a “sterile cultivar” is guaranteed to remain absolutely sterile forever?
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Here’s an activity that should be of wide interest:

A large crowd gathered at the Campbell’s Creek community centre last Friday to mark the funeral of one of this community’s most distinguished leaders: Dja Dja Wurrung elder Uncle Brien Nelson, who died on June 28.

There is a good account of Uncle Brien’s life and achievements in the Bendigo Advertiser. It can be found here

Uncle Brien played an important part in the advisory panel setting up the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park. He was a Park Ranger for many years, and had a profound understanding of the links between cultural and natural heritage.

At a ceremony to mark his appointment as honorary associate of Latrobe University in 2009, historian Gerry Gill described him as a ‘pre-eminent Aboriginal leader, who has made an extraordinary lifelong contribution to the recognition of indigenous culture and reconciliation.’ Uncle Brien’s response then was a characteristic mixture of eloquence and self effacement, including his summing up: ‘I never thought I’d be honoured by anything or anyone. I was happy just to be there.’  In 2017 he was too ill to attend a ceremony to mark his inclusion on the Victorian Aboriginal Honour Roll, but his daughter played a video in which he said, in the same spirit: ‘Thank you for taking the time to listen to a person’s dreams.’

Vale  Uncle Brien.

Here’s a brief follow up to our very modest victory over moronic TV advertising last week.

The Ad Standards community panel found that that the Suzuki ad depicted unsafe driving in a positive light: ‘the Panel considered that the depiction of the vehicle going over the large bump at a speed which caused its’ wheels to leave the road was a depiction which would constitute unsafe driving if it were to take place or a road or road related area.’

The company protested its innocence, but undertook to change its ad,  as follows: ‘While it was never our intention to portray any unsafe driving at any point during production of this TVC, we acknowledge the Panel’s findings and propose to edit both the 30 and 15 second TVCs to remove the scenes highlighted as depicting unsafe driving.’

Viewers of the telecast of the North Melbourne St Kilda AFL game yesterday afternoon will have seen the Suzuki ad. It had not been edited, and depicted the same qualities criticised by the panel. 

We’ve written to Ad standards asking them what the value of self regulation is, if it brings zero results.