Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

The FOBIF AGM will be held on Monday July 27 at 7.30 pm at the Ray Bradfield Rooms, beside Victory Park, Castlemaine. Nominations for the FOBIF committee will be accepted before the meeting. Nominations should be signed by the nominee and two other financial members.

The guest speaker will be Sarah Lloyd, author of the remarkable book, Where the slime mould creeps. See our earlier post for a review of her book.

Sarah Lloyd is a Tasmanian naturalist, writer and photographer whose passion for natural history began in early childhood with a love of birds. In 2008 Sarah initiated ‘A Sound Idea’, a project to monitor bush birds using digital sound recorders and numerous volunteers who have made (and continue to make) recordings from Tasman Island to King Island and about 100 locations in between. Her interests have broadened in recent decades to include plants, fungi, invertebrates and bryophytes.

In 2010 Sarah started exploring the little-known world of myxomycetes (also known as plasmodial or acellular slime moulds) in the wet eucalypt forest that surrounds her home at Birralee in Northern Tasmania.

Myxomycetes are unlike any other organisms. They have two animal-like stages that move about and feed, followed by a spore-bearing stage of exquisite beauty.

Sarah will talk about her work and show photographs of some common, rare and ‘new’ species (one of which has been named in her honour) and the various stages in the lives of these truly remarkable organisms.

Some of Sarah’s beautiful photos are included here. Click on each image to enlarge.

Over fifty children attended events at the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens this week as part of the FOBIF Winter School Holiday Program. Three events were held as part of the program, which aimed to give our local families an opportunity to learn about the Box Ironbark Forests and the wonderful world of books and nature studies.

The first event featured a live animal display with Jamie from Jamie and Kim’s mobile Zoo where kids and adults heard about, touched and fell in love with some of our most threatened Australian animals. This engaging presentation was followed by a treasure hunt for elements of our local forests in the largely unnoticed, but beautiful local bush part of the gardens.

The second event, ‘Habitat Stories’ was held in partnership with the Goldfields Library. Local story time hero Jess Saunders held the early primary school age children in awe with her reading of books about birds and habitat more generally with obligatory bubbles also. After lunch kids were introduced to another local, the White-winged Chough, and this bird’s mud brick nest building ability. Kids then followed on to make their own nest complete with furnishing from Barkers Creek, eggs and in one nest, “acorns, for toys”.

Judy Laycock and Alice Steel expertly ran the final event, which introduced botanical drawing to an engaged and diligent group of early primary school age children. Together the group learned about method, observation, recording and creativity by producing their own book of botanical drawings. Plenty of time was spent in the field capturing observations from the bark and various structural elements of the bush. A quick rundown on how to use watercolour and kids were away at adding colour to their drawings with beautiful results.

A massive well done and thank-you to all of the presenters and volunteers who have made the first FOBIF Winter School Holiday Program such a success. Thanks also to MASC for their support through their Strenghthening our Community funding. For further reading about why we love to do these things please see George Monbiot’s great article from The Guardian.

Photos of the three days can be viewed below. Click on photo to enlarge.

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Large Striped Greenhood (Pterosylis robusta)

It’s not the Himalayas, but FOBIF walkers found the ascent of Gough’s Range satisfying enough in glorious winter weather on Sunday. Greenhood orchids were on display, and a surprising stand of regenerating Casuarinas was an encouraging feature of a forest which is still recovering from past abuse.

From the top of the Range you can get great views to the east as far as Mount Alexander, and to the west to the Pyrenees, and this tiny forest offers an unexpected feeling of isolation from the outside world.

More photos below.

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Nioka Mellick-Cooper was the main organiser of this walk and she wrote the following post:

The first 2015 youth bush walk took place on the Mount Alexander (Leanganook) and was a great day. There were 28 people that came bright and early to do the scramble.

On top of Mount Alexander

We all met and wrote our names in the book at the Continuing Ed building, and then got on the buses and drove up to the starting place.

The walk was roughly 2 hours long (around 4km) and was a very enjoyable experience.

As we walked we saw many things including kangaroos browsing, and stopped at Dog Rocks for some morning tea. Here we heard a story told by Max from Connecting Country who kindly came on the walk with us, which had everyone entertained.

Max Schlachter talking to the group on Dog Rocks.

When we returned from the walk, lunch was provided, with a chance to refresh ourselves, and have a chat before we got back on the buses to return to Castlemaine.

The day was a success and we’re ready for the next one.

The Youth Bush Walk program is funded by the Mount Alexander Shire Council Youth Grants Program.

FOBIF is running three nature-based events for primary school children in the upcoming school holidays.  Places are limited and booking is essential. Information about the program can be found on this FOBIF page.