Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

Doug Ralph

We are not quite sure of the exact year FOBIF walks began but it was sometime in the late 1990s. Doug Ralph, one of the founders of FOBIF, initially led all the walks but later other locals shared this task. For many years Margaret Panter helped with organising and promoting the walks’ program. Hundreds of people have come along to these walks exploring and learning to appreciate our local Box-Ironbark forests. As well many people on the walks including Frances Cincotta, Margaret Panter and Noel Young have shared their in-depth knowledge of local plants.

We have always kept the same format: 8 walks a year from March to October on the third Sunday of the month. As usual this year we had an interesting variety of destinations: Forest Creek (Marie Jones), Poverty Gully and Eureka Reef (Marian Letcher), Mount Alexander (Doug Ralph), Kalimna Park (Julian Hollis), Muckleford Gorge (Deirdre Slattery), Fryers Ranges (Richard Piesse), Muckleford Forest (Neville Cooper) and Fryers Ridge (Alex Panelli). A big thanks to all those leaders.

This year we have expanded the walks program. Naomi Raftery who joined the FOBIF Committee this year organised 2 family walks, an autumn one in Kalimna Park and a spring one in Kaweka Sanctuary. If you would like to see children exploring nature have a look at this slide show below. (Click anywhere on the image to start.)

Young FOBIF member Nioka Mellick-Copper organised two teenage walks, also in spring and autumn. The first was in Muckleford and the second on the Eureka Reef interpretive trail. These two walks were supported through a Mount Alexander Shire Youth Grant. More on these walks can be viewed here and here.

Teenagers with their parents on the Spring bush walk.

Due to March and September often being hot we have decided to have shorter walks in these months. The first 2015 walk of approximately 4 km will take place on 15 March in the Rise and Shine Bush Reserve. This walk will be led by Geoff Park. The full program for next year’s walks (adult, teenage and family) will be available early next year.

Election brochures are starting to appear in letter boxes and we’ll be taking a brief look at the ones that come our  way.  First up is the Liberal-National Coalition: we have three of their brochures directed at Bendigo region electors.

The first, under the names of Premier Napthine and MPs Wendy Lovell and Amanda Millar, lists six categories for ‘building a better Bendigo region’: roads, communities, healthcare, schools, public transport, and crime.

The second, from Damian Drum, MP, lists 30 ‘key initiatives’ and 42 ‘further key investments.’

And the third, from Bendigo West candidate Michael Langdon, lists ‘five big plans for Bendigo.’

Not one of them mentions the environment, although this features in recent polls as more important to electors than two of the ones they do promote prominently– roads and law and order. No mention of water, either; or agriculture. Their absence suggests where these issues rest in the government’s priorities.

Brochures: if these are any indication, the Coalition isn’t very interested in the environment.

To be fair, you can’t judge a government by its brochures…for a comprehensive list of the Coalition’s claims on the environment, click here . The list has to be judged on its merits, though we can’t resist pointing out that it omits mention of private development, cattle grazing and prospecting in National Parks. It also seems to assume that abolition of the 20% renewable energy target, burning a record area of public land and making it easier to clear native vegetation are wins for the environment.  We are a long distance from the time of Bill Borthwick, Victoria’s first and probably greatest Conservation Minister, who served under Premiers Bolte, Hamer and Thompson, and founded the EPA and the Land Conservation Council.

For a detailed assessment of the Coalition’s enviro record by Environment Victoria, click here. 

Next up: Labour and Greens brochures, if we get any.

Recent polls have found that 81% of Victorian voters support more funding for the protection of nature, 57% oppose private developments in National Parks, and the environment is a bigger issue of concern than law-and-order and roads.

There are polls and polls, of course, but these findings look pretty reasonable from here. In any case, FOBIF believes that candidates in the upcoming election should be put on the spot about what they think about issues to do with the management of nature. We’ve circulated to members a list of questions it might be worth putting to candidates nominated so far. We hope lots of people will take the opportunity to ask the questions–and that they make it clear they don’t want pre packaged party responses. Let’s find out whether the candidates really have thought about the issues [and have serious convictions about them], or whether they’re just regurgitating the Party line.

Here are some questions we think are worth a run:

1. In 2012-13 the State Government embarked on a program of cutting 10% of Parks Victoria’s staff, continuing a process of cuts begun under the previous government. Do you support these cuts? Can you tell me how many Park Rangers are looking after parks in the Bendigo region? Do you think MPs would be more efficient if their funding was cut by 10%?

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In 1846 Joseph Parker described Campbells creek as

‘A scene of beautiful, crystal like waterholes, which sparkled in the glittering rays of the sun; every  waterhole was teeming with fish,and flocks of ducks.On the slopes and hills on either side of the creek, stood evergreen trees, with such even regularity, as to lead one to believe that they had been planted by the hand of science, consisting of golden, silver and black wattle, many of them in full bloom, also blackwood, sheoak and honeysuckle…’

Campbells Creek from the footbridge: many years of work by the Friends group have brought a remarkable revival.

Parker called it ‘nature’s paradise’, but the creek got a bit of a battering over the following century: you can see a photo of a section of it in 1946 here. Its current revival is the result of the commitment and hard work of the Friends of Campbells Creek and about 100 people rocked up to the Friends community day last Sunday to celebrate the creek and its future as a community resource. Have a look at the group’s Facebook page for more details.

Alex Panelli led the last 2014 walk on 19 October in the Fryers Ranges around the Sugarbag Track area. Noel Young wrote the following piece on the walk and included an extensive flowering plant list:

On a day of glorious weather, the walk for most of us quickly turned into a Wildflower Walk as Alex had selected an area which was flowering profusely and appeared to be at the peak of the season. Unlike last month’s walk there was no sign of cup moth damage, and the trees looked very healthy. Another healthy sign was the almost constant calling of birds all along the track. Although I have not mastered all the bird calls, I could list as definites: Horsefield’s Bronze Cuckoo, Golden Bronze Cuckoo, Fan-tail Cuckoo, Grey Thrush, White throated Tree-creeper, Rufous Whistler, Fuscous Honey-eater, Olive backed Oriole, Grey Fantail, Blue Wren, Kookaburra, and Spotted Pardalote.

I counted about 30 species of flowering plants: Yam Daisy, Slender Rice flower, Pink Bells, Milkmaids, Creamy Candles, Primrose Goodenia, Fairy Wax-flower, Common Beard-heath, Grey Everlasting, Sticky Everlasting, Downy Grevillea, Billy Buttons, Fireweed (Senecio sp), Showy Parrot-pea, Matted Bush-pea, Prostrate Flat-pea, Bulbine lily. Chocolate lily, Black Anther Flax-lily, Erect Guinea-flower, Daphne Heath, Native Violet and Twining Fringe-lily.

Spider Orchid (Caladenia phaeoclavia). Photo by Noel Young

Orchids: Spotted Sun-orchid, Bearded Greenhood, Purplish Beard-orchid, Pink Fingers, Hooded Caladenia and Waxlip Orchid.

Theo Mellick-Cooper took the first three photos below and the rest were taken by Bronwyn Silver. Click to enlarge.

Robert Frost wrote a famous poem called ‘The Road Not Taken’ that begins with the line ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood’. Had he been writing about Kalimna Park he might have added ‘then diverged again, and again, and again’. It’s a fact that Kalimna Park has got more trails than it knows what to do with and a walk there almost always involves a series of decisions about which ‘road’ to take that day.

Enter Jase Haysom. Central Victoria’s original GPS-wielding cartographic adventurer and community mapper extraordinaire. Jase has spent the last few months mapping Kalimna Park to create a topographical map that shows almost all of the roads and trails in the Park – he drew the line at kangaroo paths and goat tracks.

Thanks to Jase’s effort you can now download a map of Kalimna Park page from his Cartography Community Mapping website.

The map will also be made available as a hardcopy from the Castlemaine Information Centre and will be used by the Friends of Kalimna Park to help them plan activities and promote the park. The Friends hope that the map can eventually be installed at the Kalimna Point carpark.

As for the ‘road not taken’, Jase will never have to sigh at the thought it – he’s mapped them all!

‘There was never a body of men so foolishly, disastrously wrong,’ wrote Eric Rolls in his 1984 book, They all ran wild.

He was talking about the Acclimatisation Societies of Australia, people who believed that this continent was lacking in nice plants and animals, and decided to bring a few good ones in. Among their introductions were carp, rabbits, sparrows and starlings.

Local researcher Doug Ralph has unearthed the 1874 annual report of the Castlemaine branch of the society. It’s easy to be superior about their efforts from this distance, but their attitudes were shared by some pretty well informed people at the time: Victoria’s preeminent botanist, Ferdinand von Mueller, for example, is responsible for bringing blackberries into the state!

Assorted weeds near Chewton: the nineteenth century enthusiasm to ‘improve’ Australia has left us with an expensive legacy of feral plants and animals.

Part of the 1874 report is printed below. It’s worth noting that the society’s effort to bring carp to the district eventually failed. This pest didn’t appear in numbers in Victoria till the mid 20th century:

‘In our last report we stated that the efforts of the society had been more particularly directed to stocking the various reservoirs and watercourses with fish This work has been continued during the past year, and we have received from the Ballarat Fish Acclimatisation Society several consignments of English perch, which have been placed in the Muckleford Creek and elsewhere We cannot omit referring to the immense amount of food and enjoyment this fish has afforded to the inhabitants of Ballarat, when from Lake Wendouree (which was four years ago a dry plain) upwards of nine tons of fish were caught during the past season We have every reason to believe that our experiments may prove equally successful. The trout which we reported as having been placed in the Harcourt reservoir we have not yet heard of any being seen or caught. But, in case they have survived, we should have some evidence during the next few months. The Murray cod and other fish
placed in the Expedition Pass Reservoir we have information that they have been seen, and no doubt during the next season there will be plenty of fish for the anglers in this sheet of water. The carp also have multiplied wonderfully in the several private dams where they were placed, and no doubt they exist in large quantities in the various larger reservoirs where they have been placed.

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