Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

One way of plugging the knowledge gap is by…listening more carefully.  Andrew Skeoch’s book Deep Listening to Nature offers some keys on how to go about it.

The striking achievement of this book is that it seduces readers into actively focusing on sound: partly through an engaging writing style, and partly via the fact that it’s accompanied by an easily accessible set of soundscapes. The trick is, you access the Listening Earth website via a simple click with your device; references to birdsong are ‘illustrated’ by a recording of the sound itself. This is not just a perfect book for bird enthusiasts, but a wonderful aid for anyone who wants to hear and understand what’s happening in the natural world. What does a robin’s song mean? What’s the point of that monotonous pigeon ‘ooom’? Is birdsong really music? Is the Butcher Bird a better singer than the Nightingale? Oh, and what about this: ‘Why biodiversity?’

‘Cockatoos are intelligent creatures…’ ‘Their call is a big sound that tears at the air…Toneless and chaotic, they are nevertheless expressive…’

Very big questions are posed here, and some provocative answers provided. The theme throughout, however is that ‘deep listening’ is a form of concentrated attentiveness and openness to nature: ‘If nature can be thought of as a game of sustaining life, then by listening, we can hear its rules of play.’

What’s really great about this book is that although some pretty challenging ideas are put forward, the language is clear, and the tone is accommodating. Andrew is not scared to throw in the occasional unexpected ‘cultural’ reference—for example, to Doctor Who’s brilliant summing up of Time as ‘wibbly wobbly, timey wimey…stuff’;  or to Saint Francis’s legendary duet with a nightingale. (The saint conceded that the bird was the better singer).

An additional benefit for our readers is that Andrew lives in this region: so that while the book ranges all over the globe, there are plenty of local references which readers can quickly set against their own experiences.

The sound track to the book is available separately at https://listeningearth.com/andrewskeoch/soundtrack.html

Check it out…and get the book.

A small group of heroes tackled FOBIF’s May walk yesterday: a zigzag route through the Mount Lofty Natural Features reserve. Bitter weather at 9.30 improved nicely into a mild though brisk autumn day by 10…Well, maybe more brisk than mild, but not much more: great walking weather, in fact, with good patches of sunshine.

So…where is the summit? Some of the FOBIF group on the Mount Lofty ridge. Photo: Liz Martin

This reserve is a great eucalypt arboretum, with very large old specimens of Yellow Box, Long-leaved Box, White Box, Mealy Bundy and Red Box trees. In spite of its small size, it contains some lovely hidden valleys, and is surprisingly various.

Disappointingly, the group was unable to scale Mount Lofty peak, which is so discreet as to be unattainable. However, we did skip over the summit ridge, and it’s possible we went over the peak without noticing.

The Mount Lofty reserve has an extraordinary collection of large old eucalypts scattered amongst regrowth smaller trees… Photo: Liz Martin

Our thanks to walk leader Bernard Slattery for taking us through a route so complex he seemed occasionally confused about it himself.

…The reserve also has a number of fallen giants. Compare the size of the log with the surrounding regrowth. The comparison suggests how long the country needs to be protected before it can heal to its past grandeur.

Next month’s walk is around The Monk. Check the program for details.

An updated version of Responding to Country: Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests 1998-2023 is now available. The new edition includes an abridged version of Alison Pouliot’s speech, ‘The gradual changes, the shifts in tones’, given at the February 2023 launch of the FOBIF exhibition at the Newstead Arts Hub. You can purchase the book through our website, Stoneman’s Bookroom in Castlemaine or Bookish in Bendigo. 

Speakers at the launch, Newstead Arts Hub

Newstead Landcare Group is hosting a talk by Barry Golding at the Newstead Community Centre, starting at 7.30 pm next Tuesday April 18. All are welcome to attend. 

The arrival of Europeans on the continent we now call Australia had profound effects on the indigenous peoples and the landscape they cared for. This dramatic impact was greatly accelerated by the gold rushes that swept through Central Victoria. Is the way the landscape once looked now lost to our knowledge, or can historical research help us re-imagine our land as it once was?

Professor Barry Golding of Federation University has spent much time in combing through historical documents to reconstruct a picture of the former natural splendour of the land of the Dja Dja Wurrung peoples of Central Victoria. He will be sharing some of his findings at Newstead Landcare Group’s presentation on Tuesday April 18th.

“We are so excited to have Barry presenting to us on this complex and fascinating story” said Newstead Landcare Secretary Patrick Kavanagh. “Some of the imagery of great fields of Yam Daisies (Myrnong) and Kangaroo Grass with large Casuarinas and Silver Banksias is just breathtaking. And then there are the accounts of the great pools along the course of the Loddon with extraordinary schools of Murray Cod and other native fish” Mr Kavanagh said. “Prof. Golding was booked to present this work at Newstead Landcare’s AGM last October, but floods had cut many roads in the area so it’s great that he’s been able to reschedule the talk.”

Our Goughs Range FOBIF walk will take place next Sunday 16 April. You can contact the leader Harley Parker (0409 135 889) for more information. 

The date for the following month’s walk is Sunday 21 May, not 28 May as previously written in our walk’s program. This Mount Lofty walk will be led by Bernard Slattery (0499 624 160).

FOBIF has been having another look at the heritage question. As we’ve pointed out before, heritage is a funny business. Sometimes it’s unintentionally funny—as when the national heritage listing for the Diggings Park tells us that the miners had ‘a lifestyle intimately connected to the earth.’ Does this mean they dug holes? We do not wish to denigrate the miners, who were people of their time: but the heritage industry has an apparent obsession with putting a positive spin on things, an obsession which can sometimes seem slightly gaga—as when they use the phrase ‘extensive vegetation modification’ to refer to wholesale environmental destruction, for example.

An example of ‘extensive vegetation modification’ and its consequences. The relentlessly positive language in heritage documents oversimplifies history and might amount to a cover up.

More seriously, check this out, offered as evidence of ‘outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place’s importance in the course, or pattern, of Australia’s natural or cultural history’:

‘The goldfield, which played a major role in drawing overseas immigrants to the colony, and in raising from the ground so much of the golden wealth which flowed into Australian and overseas markets, played a substantial part in all those changes which gold wrought on Victoria and Australia: increased population, increased wealth, the growth in manufacturing, the improvement in transport, the development of regional centres and townships, the further development of a middle class, democratization of political institutions, reform of land laws, the genesis of an Australian Chinese community, and so forth…’

All true. All very positive. But is there anything missing?

We wonder what might be covered in that harmless phrase, ‘and so forth’. Like, is there anything notable missing from that list of entirely positive stuff about changes in demography?

You might find a clue in this book: Black Gold—Aboriginal people on the goldfields of Victoria, 1850-1870 by Fred Cahir (ANU Press 2012). It’s online, and free here.

The heritage listing comes perilously close to endorsing a terra nullius idea of our history. Maybe it’s time for a revision?

The latest issue of Parkwatch magazine contains a pertinent article attacking a few popular myths about fire. Here’s a sample:

‘Our land managers seem to have been subservient to a litany of inherited myths, and display a puzzling lack of curiosity over recent research.

‘An important element of that research shows that fuel reduction burns will be effective for a few years, but can be followed by a couple of decades of greatly increased growth of flammable shrubs, followed over the long-term by relatively open and less flammable

‘Publication of those important studies has failed to alter fire management in Victoria; it hasn’t even prompted FFMV to implement a monitoring program whereby the changes in forest composition and structure are measured, over time, after management burns are performed.

‘Indeed since the 1930s, when the Victorian Government began formally recording its fuel reduction burns, there has been no program to monitor the results of those burns: no recording of changes in flammability levels over time, no documentation of understorey species changes or, for that matter, no measurement of effective increases in public safety.’ (FOBIF emphasis)

The article goes on to discuss  the relevance of indigenous approach to fire, and recent attempts to use Indigenous fire practices as somehow incompatible with current conservation thinking.

You can find the article here. Have a look.