Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

The Victorian Environment Friends Network (VEFN) exists to help represent the common interests of all Friends groups in Victoria. They are currently undertaking a re-assessment of the the organisation and as part of this process they are inviting interested people and organisations to complete a survey. All the information including a link to the survey can be found here.

Here’s what land managers are dealing with: granite rocks put on the track near Lang’s Lookout on Mount Alexander have been graffitied with aggressive messages, ‘faggot council’ being one.

Granite blocks across the track near Lang’s Lookout. They increase the walking distance to the lookout by about 100 metres, but that’s enough to cause anger, in a culture that privileges car access.

The rocks were put on the track in Spring last year [not by Council], and are designed to keep vehicles off a flat patch of ground to the north of the TV tower. The road block means you need to walk about 100 metres more on pleasant, level ground to get to the lookout rocks.

You could read a fair bit of meaning into those pink words: but the main one seems to be that absolute car access to everything is vital, and removing it is a violation of a fundamental right. That’s part of our culture.

The Department of the Environment is gearing up to conduct planned burns in the Castlemaine area in the Autumn season. The map below shows the burns planned for this and next year close to Castlemaine town. A clearer version, which can be expanded to show burns in the Maldon, Muckleford, Taradale, Newstead, Fryers forest and Tarilta areas, can be found here.

DELWP map showing proposed burn areas close to Castlemaine. The major burn planned for this season is the eastern side of Kalimna Park.

The major burn planned for this season is the eastern side of the Kalimna Park tourist road. Conservation representatives plan to meet with DELWP fire officers soon to discuss the implications of this operation. The zone shown to the north of Chewton is planned for the 2016-7 season.

FOBIF is also interested in a small proposed burn in the Chewton bushlands [you can see it at the right hand side of the map]. Our initial concerns are, first: how burning in such steep terrain will affect soil stability; and second,  to know how the burning of this block is integrated with fuel management on the surrounding private land. As we’ve reported before, DELWP fuel management is supposed to be ‘tenure blind’, and involve private as well as public land. So far, we’ve seen no evidence of this policy going into practice. It’s particularly of interest to us because of the presence of the pine plantations which, though on public land, are privately managed.

Vicroads engineers held a briefing session at Newstead on Thursday March 3 to consult with local people about plans for works along the Pyrenees Highway between Castlemaine and Newstead. The session was heavily attended by residents with interest in a range of matters, from a pedestrian crossing for schoolchildren to a wider shoulder for cyclists [there’s not enough money for this one], and concerns about tree removal.

FOBIF’s interest centres on the last of these: the plans involve the removal of 10 large  [larger than 70 cm in diametre at breast height], 7 medium [between 52 and 70cm dbh, and 126 small [less than 52 cm dbh] trees. The removals are to reduce the risk of ‘run off road’ accidents involving tree collisions. There have been five of these since 2009, one of them fatal.

Engineers have gone to some trouble to avoid vegetation clearance with these works, a welcome change from a few years ago, when they seemed to want to scorch the earth for three metres on both sides of the road. This time they’ve been more judicious about placement of safety barriers. And removal of a mere 10 large trees doesn’t seem much: but FOBIF is always concerned about such incremental inroads into what is a rare resource in this region: a big tree. We’ll report on this in more detail when we’ve done a detailed examination of the proposed removals. Safety is, of course, a central consideration: it would be good to achieve it without unnecessary environmental damage.

The project is still at the stage of community consultation, and will then have to go through an environmental impact assessment before implementation. A spirit of co operation seemed to be the order of the night on Thursday: but memories of such disasters as the Western Highway tree massacre justify close attention to projects like this.

In the grey/brown bleakness of our bushlands at the moment you can still find a rare green spot–like the one below. Unfortunately in this case the reason for the green isn’t a natural one: it’s an apparently long standing leak in the Poverty Gully water race, which is currently flowing.

Below the Poverty Gully water race, Fryers Forest, February 17: the healthy sedge population is fed by persistent leaks from the race.

Water is put into this race a few times a year when allocations are available, to serve a small number of customers with rights. Over the years there have been mutterings about closing it down, and saving the water for use of the wider communities of Kyneton and Castlemaine.Maybe an even better use would be to put additional environmental flows into the suffering Coliban River.

The wastage of water through the primitive channel [constructed in the mid 1870s] must be enormous, though we’ve never been able to get a figure from Coliban water as to how much is lost through leakage and evaporation between Malmsbury and Castlemaine. The case can’t have been helped by the fact that a DELWP fuel reduction operation in 2013 inadvertently burned to cinders a lot of plastic sheeting put into the race as a water proofing exercise!

Leakage from the race, February 17: the race is a rough and ready construction, built in the 1870s, and leaks an unknown quantity of water.

A few species of Eucalypt are flowering profusely at the moment, in spite of dry conditions. Why does one specimen of a particular species flower, and another not? Local conditions play a part, but some of it is still a mystery. Still, we’ll take the benefits where we can get them.

Species in flower at the moment include Grey Box, Red Stringybark and Manna Gums, though such is the erratic nature of the flowering seasons that you can occasionally find other species unpredictably in flower.

Grey Box in flower, Forest Creek, Castlemaine.

Scientist, Alison Pouliot ©

Alison Pouliot is running her wonderful fungus forays and workshops again this year. This is a list of some that are reasonably close:

Saturday 23 April 2016 – Trentham   Foray – Fungus Foray in the Wombat Forest
Thursday 28 April 2016 – Woodend  Foray – A Foray Among the Funguses
Saturday 30 April 2016 – Baynton   Workshop – The Fungi: An Introduction to a Curious Kingdom
Monday 2 May 2016 – Baringhup Seminar ­- Fungi of Eddington Forest and Bells Swamp
Wednesday 25 May 2016 – Shelbourne Foray – Shelbourne Forest Fungus Foray
Sunday 29 May 2016 – Creswick Foray – A Foray Among the Funguses

You can find all the details of these and other workshops here.  

© Alison Pouliot

Applications for New Projects Now Open

Connecting Country is a not-for profit community organisation which aims to restore landscapes and biodiversity across the Mount Alexander shire and immediate surrounds.

They have a program, ‘Connecting Landscapes Across the Mount Alexander Region’, which allows them to work with landholders and Landcare groups to enhance bushland on private land.  This program also allows them to undertake revegetation of indigenous plant species on private land.

Support they can provide is skilled labour (using their Works Crew) and financial contributions towards restoration and revegetation activities on part or all of your property.  Costs to the landholder are usually negligible.

Direct seeding lines winding their way through a property in Faraday as part of the Connecting Country on-ground works program. Photo:Bonnie Humphreys

They have capacity to take on new projects on private land during 2016 and 2017.  If your property or project area is found to meet the criteria, the activities that they support can include: Continue reading →

Where did the idea get about that our trees all ‘look the same’?

The problem has been around for a long time: in 1770 Captain Cook wrote about the NSW coast: ‘the woods do not produce any variety of trees.’ In 1836 Darwin claimed that ‘the extreme uniformity of the vegetation’ was ‘the most remarkable feature of the vegetation’ he observed in Australia. And in 1939 the poet AD Hope talked of the ‘drab green and desolate grey’ of our vegetation. And he compounded the insult by suggesting that the Australian people were just as monotonous…

Maybe these very worthy experts weren’t looking hard enough?

Our new exhibition of photos in Castlemaine is set to have a go at overturning the still widespread notion that our trees are monotonously uniform. Trees of the Mount Alexander Region mounted by the Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests will run at Togs Place café from 26 February till 31 March 2016. The exhibition aims to highlight the amazing variety to be seen in our local indigenous trees: even those of the same genus—for example, eucalypts—can exhibit a wild variety of shape and colour, as well as hosting an extraordinary diversity of wildlife.

One of the exhibition photos by Patrick Kavanagh (Nankeen Kestrel, Moolort Plains). Tree hollows are vital for the survival of much of our wildlife, so even dead trees can be important features of the land. This photo shows one of three fledglings raised in this hollow on the Moolort Plains. The other two have just ventured from the nest. This one seems to be stretching in preparation for the big step out.

The exhibition photos have been selected from over 125 photos that were submitted to FOBIF during December and January after a ‘call for photos’ was posted on our website. In June the exhibition will have a second showing at the new arts venue, the Newstead Railway Arts Hub. At this exhibition at least one photo from each contributor will be included in a continuous slideshow.

Photos will be for sale with proceeds going to FOBIF to cover costs.