Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

At the AGM the following members were elected unopposed to the FOBIF committee for the upcoming year:

President: Marie Jones; Vice President: Neville Cooper; Secretary: Bernard Slattery; Treasurer: Lynette Amaterstein; Committee members: Asha Bannon, Frances Cincotta, Christine Henderson, Jeremy Holland, Cassia Read, Bronwyn Silver, Jo Matthews

Local papers have recently carried items warning the public that snakes are about. Yes, they are, and the advice offered is good: be careful in areas snakes might frequent, control pets in such areas, be aware of correct procedures in case of a  bite, and so on.

Wheeler Street Castlemaine, September 20: more than five million reptiles are killed on our roads annually.

One piece of advice often missing is: watch out on the road. As we’ve pointed out numerous times, snakes are far more often victims than  aggressors. So, here’s our annual advice: keep an eye out for reptiles when you’re driving. [More than five million reptiles are killed by cars every year: see our Post]

The FOBIF AGM is on Monday 9th October not the 16th as was previously posted.

Cassia Read will be the guest speaker: The urban garden in Box Ironbark Country: Can you have your roses and fairywrens too?

You can find all the details for the event here.  

Our guest speaker at this year’s FOBIF Annual General Meeting will be Dr Cassia Read. Cassia is an ecologist, educator and garden designer, working at the intersection of biodiversity conservation and human wellbeing. She is Principal Ecologist and Co-Founder of the Castlemaine Institute and a FOBIF Committee member. She will be speaking on creating garden wildlife habitats.

Cassia in her Castlemaine garden

The urban garden in Box-Ironbark country: Can you have your roses and fairywrens too?

Whatever your gardening style you can nudge your garden in a wildlife friendly direction. By adding habitat elements and designing for alignment between your needs and the needs of wildlife, you can create a stunning landscape that supports the remarkable creatures of Box Ironbark Country. Whether you prefer formal or wild gardens, cottage gardens or bush-blocks, by realising the potential of your garden oases you can be part of creating neighbourhood networks that will support people and biodiversity in a changing climate. This talk will provide you with know-how and inspiration about creating wildlife habitat, whether you’re starting from scratch or adding to an existing garden.

There will be a short formal AGM at 7.30 followed by Cassia’s talk. Supper will be provided and everyone is welcome. If you wish to nominate for the FOBIF committee details can be found here. The meeting will be held in the Ray Bradfield Room,  Victory Park, Castlemaine, with access from the IGA carpark or Mostyn Street. 

A strong group rocked up for FOBIF’s September walk in the Fryers Ranges yesterday. The weather was ideal, and the Ridge put on a typically spectacular display of wattles, peas, heath and numerous other species—thirty plus species in flower, by some counts. Highlights were displays of massed Hakea in flower, Broad-Leafed Peppermints in abundant flower, and the rare Sporadic Wattle at the end of its flowering season. The Fryers Ridge has a good month of high quality flowering to go, so now’s the time to get out.

Christine Henderson led the group through a short and relaxed ramble which allowed Plenty of time for checking the details. It did, admittedly, end in an almost epic climb, but that’s the price you pay for wandering in the Fryers Forest, and all participants survived in more or less good shape.

Christine (right) amongst Sporadic Wattle. Photo Jenny Rolland

Our thanks to Christine for showing us a great corner of one of the region’s (and the world’s?) premier wildflower hotspots.

Photos below by Liz Martin.

Next month’s walk is also a wildflower loop in the Fryers Ranges led by Frances Cincotta. Check the website for details.

Are we being melodramatic? Maybe. Check this out:

That’s a patch of Hardenbergia, on the side of the maintenance track on the Coliban main channel, south of the Fryers-Taradale road. There’s quite a lot of Hardenbergia on that stretch: in fact, we chose to highlight it in our notes for walk 13 in our 20 Bushwalks guide. There’s also quite a bit of Trailing Shaggy Pea, and Grevillea, and Grey Everlasting, and Bush-Pea. Most of it now looks like this:

Someone with a key to the locked gate has gone along the race, spraying these quite harmless plants, for reasons unknown. We’ve enquired of Coliban Water what might be the rationale for the spraying. They’re looking into it.

This is what Trailing Shaggy-pea looks like when it’s alive:

It flowers from November. There are impressive carpets of it in the area of the Coliban channel…but not along the track, now. We’ll report on the reasons for the current bleak look of the maintenance track when and if we find out.

The Annual General Meeting of the Friends will be held on Monday October 9 at the Ray Bradfield Rooms, Castlemaine, at 7.30 pm. Committee elections will take place at the meeting.

All members are eligible for election to the committee, and we urge you to consider nominating. There’s no official form: all you need is to be a member,  get a member to nominate you, one to second the nomination, and your acceptance of the nomination. If necessary, we’ll come to your place to pick up the nomination!

The annual reports and elections will be followed by a  a creative and original presentation by Cassia Read on Australia’s most popular outdoors activity: gardening: The urban garden in Box Ironbark Country: Can you have your roses and fairywrens too?

More details to follow.

Environmentalists around the state are mourning the sudden death of Phil Ingamells, who died suddenly at home last month.

Phil spent a decade in Castlemaine in the nineties, and was active in the local campaign for a Box-Ironbark national park. He was a foundation member of FOBIF, and was a power behind numerous local initiatives, including the Mamunya arts festivals, and promotion of good information about the goldfields. For the last 20 years he has been a campaigner for the Victorian National Parks Association. Here is a statement from the VNPA:

Phil Ingamells with Deirdre Slattery on Mount Alexander 2023: his knowledge of protected areas around the state was unequalled.

‘Philip Clark Ingamells was a legend in conservation circles and a tireless campaigner for parks and nature. We all owe him a great debt of gratitude for his work. Nature in Victoria is better for his efforts, and we are all the wiser. A thoughtful, persuasive writer and eloquent speaker, he played a critical role in protecting Victoria’s natural places and national parks.

‘With his rare skill for clearly explaining complicated (and often dry) policy conundrums, Phil’s pieces in Park Watch transported us to the heart of Victoria’s natural places. He was a warm friend and colleague, a lover of robust conversation and argument – a talent that was not lost on ministers and officials alike.

Phil Ingamells addressing FOBIF’s 25th gathering at Newstead this year. Keynote speaker Alison Pouliot is on the right.

‘With expansive skills and knowledge honed over the past two decades at VNPA and beyond, Phil played a key role in numerous park management plans. He filled his hours advocating for action to protect the incredible wildlife and places he spent so much time in, be that hiking, photographing or surveying.’

Phil never lost his connection with the Mount Alexander region, and was a consistent source of support and inspiration for FOBIF in its campaigns for better management of our bushlands. He is already badly missed.

There will be a public memorial held for Phil at 12pm on Thursday 14 September in Eltham. Please RSVP https://events.humanitix.com/memorial-service-for-philip-ingamells