Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

Alison Pouloit

Alison Pouliot is running workshops and seminars on natural history photography covering various environmental themes this summer.

31 January 2018 – Snake Valley – The science and art of nature photography
9 February 2018 – Otway Ranges – A murder of crows
18 March 2018 – Lockwood South – Focus on trees
24 March 2018 – Trentham – Through a forest wilderness
31 March 2018 – Trentham – Fungi in Focus

For more information and bookings see  www.alisonpouliot.com

Two of Alison’s images

Damien Cook

The Friends of Campbells Creek Landcare Group needs helpers to plant hundreds of plants into one of the only remaining creek-side wetlands left in our district.

The group is holding a wetland information day and working bee this Sunday the 10th of December.

Ian Higgins, the group’s environment officer said “we are lucky to have Damien Cook coming along to tell us how wetlands are faring in our region and advise us on improving our own”. Damien, a keen naturalist for 30 years, is a professional ecologist specialising in wetland and riparian restoration.

You can read more about arrangements for the day on this Friends of Campbells Creek web page.

Indigenous history shouldn’t just be the archaeology of a society frozen in the past: it should open up ‘glorious’ prospects: of a time when indigenous people will be accepted as leaders in this community. This is the view expressed by Rodney Carter, CEO of the Dja Dja Wurrung Aboriginal Clans corporation last Friday.

Mr Carter was speaking at the launch of Bain Attwood’s book The good country in Castlemaine. The Phee Broadway theatre was full for the launch of this important local history, and those present were privileged to witness an interesting contrast in styles, between the eloquent brevity of Jaara speakers Uncle Rick Nelson and Rodney Carter, and the more academic presentations of author Bain Attwood and presenter Dr Rani Kerin.

The good country: the Dja Dja Wurrung, the settlers and the protectors, is the first full length history which tries to give a voice to the Jaara people as active agents in the epic social changes of the nineteenth century. Without avoiding the reality of violence and dispossession, it tries to show how indigenous people reacted with intelligence and flexibility to the overwhelming forces ranged against them: in other words, it retrieves their lost voices, and shows them actively engaging with the new society being created on the ruins of their culture.

Continue reading →

At a ceremony in Melbourne last week senior Jaara elder Uncle Brien Nelson was included in the Victorian Aboriginal honour roll.

For many years Uncle Brien has been one of this community’s most distinguished cultural leaders. In 2009 he was made an honorary associate of Latrobe University, for which he has made a number of films with Gerry Gill, who described him at the time as a ‘pre-eminent Aboriginal leader, who has made an extraordinary lifelong contribution to the recognition of indigenous culture and reconciliation.’ Uncle Brien’s response was a characteristic mixture of eloquence and self effacement, including his summing up: ‘I never thought I’d be honoured by anything or anyone. I was happy just to be there.’  This time he was too ill to attend the ceremony, but his daughter played a video in which he said, in the same spirit: ‘Thank you for taking the time to listen to a person’s dreams.’