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.

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