Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

Thanks to everyone who has paid their membership fees.

In case it has slipped your mind or are a new member, you can find the relevant form here.

Members who haven’t changed their details can skip filling out the form and deposit their subscription directly in the FOBIF bank account:

BSB 633000 Account number 108508086.

Please include your surname/s as the reference. 

Maldon Cycling, with support from FOBIF, has produced a new book, Seventeen Gravel Bike Rides: Maldon & Beyond. 

The area around Maldon is a great place for gravel rides on unmade roads and tracks. The routes are through local bush and farming land around Maldon, to Newstead, Castlemaine and Cairn Curran Reservoir. A number of rides are in the Maldon Historic Reserve and the Muckleford State Forest, which have networks of interesting tracks.

The book contains ten maps by Jase Haysom showing seventeen routes and is generously illustrated with photos by Bronwyn Silver, Ian McKelvie, Bernard Slattery, and Geoff Park. Bernard has also contributed a short essay, ‘This country is worth a good look!’. Sample  pages from the book can be found here and here. 

Rosalie Hastwell, the councillor for Maldon & surrounds, will launch the book at Maldon Neighbourhood Centre (corner Church and Edwards Streets, Maldon) at 11 am on Sunday 15 June.

Light refreshments will be served. If you would like to attend, please let Maldon Cycling know for catering purposes. Their email address is maldoncycling@gmail.com 

We will provide information about where to buy the book and the price in a future post.

The Alchemy of Gold, an event bringing together ‘experts, historians and the community to explore how the discovery of gold in the 1850s reshaped Victoria economically, socially and politically’ took place over the weekend of May 16-18. Its aim: ‘celebrate our goldfields heritage’.

The context of the event is the ambitious project to achieve World Heritage status for the Victorian goldfields.

You only have to look at the above list of topics to realise that the title, ‘alchemy of gold’, and the aim, to ‘celebrate our goldfields heritage’, were contentious. From the beginning of the weekend, it was acknowledged that not everything in that era was to be celebrated: gold rushes worldwide have all been accompanied by dispossession of indigenous peoples; and the environmental destruction that accompanied Victoria’s rush was eloquently evoked during the event [see below].

The negative effects of the age of gold haven’t conveniently disappeared into the past, and a simple ‘celebration’ would run the risk of looking like a whitewash. This is particularly problematic when you consider the tendency of heritage experts to ignore or downplay the negative experiences of the past. And a World Heritage Listing, if improperly defined, could worsen the situation by solidifying the notion that the gold rush was all romanticism, grit and colourful drama (to be remembered over a nice cup of coffee).

So: how did Alchemy of Gold go? Like all events in which there were numerous speakers (well over thirty, in this case), it was a mixed bag. Beautifully organised, smoothly run: but leaving us with difficult questions.

One question inevitably arising in such an event is: how have the events of the gold rush shaped the society and place we live in now? The answers are familiar: egalitarianism, a cosmopolitan society, democracy…but one feature of our society which usually doesn’t make this list is: a tendency to exploit nature without heed for the future.

With influential observers touting a ‘new golden age’ in Victoria, it’s important to avoid repeating past mistakes: and we know that some of the less desirable practices of the gold rush have not disappeared.   The Victorian Auditor General reported in 2020 that many current or recent mining and quarry sites ‘have been poorly rehabilitated or not treated at all. If not addressed, these sites also present risks to Victorians and the environment.’ The estimated cost to the taxpayer of fixing this was at the time $361 million or more.

Currently the state government is considering a proposal to increase fees payable by mining companies for rehabilitation by 234%, because ‘commissioned independent analysis in 2022 indicated that fees recovered from the resources sector do not cover the costs of regulating it.’ [A consultation on this proposal is open now on Engage Victoria. Curiously, this consultation seems to have the aim of figuring whether the proposal is good for business or not. It doesn’t ask whether the idea is good for the environment, or the public. You might want to check the consultation out here. It closes on June 23].

The question arising out of all this is: which practices in our gold rush heritage do we want to celebrate and promote, and which ones do we want to soberly assess and avoid repeating?

There were some very good presentations at the weekend’s event, but we’ll focus on one theme only: environmental history. Standout speakers here included Susan Lawrence, co author of Sludge– disaster on Victorian Goldfields (a book which should be compulsory reading for all heritage buffs), and local ecologist Paul Foreman. Paul’s presentation began bluntly:

‘…It is timely to reflect on the Gold Rush’s full legacy – not just the claim that the Victorian goldfields were the cradle of modern Australia economically (i.e. wealth generation) and culturally (i.e. mass global immigration, in part the origin of the Australian ‘fair go’ and so on), but also that the gold rush “obliterated” the natural environment (ECC 1997) and further entrenched Aboriginal dispossession, vilification and oppression (Cahir 2012). Now I should say the word “obliterated” is not my words – it’s a direct quote from a systematic environmental assessment by a Government Statutory Authority in the 1990’s). Even if it is a given that people accepted these sorts of consequences as an inevitable price to pay on the frontier and indeed today, it is also true that the full impacts remain largely misunderstood and/or ignored.’

After documenting the damage referred to above, Paul ended on a positive note, which we believe should underpin any World Heritage bid:

‘I think it is important not to gloss over the less savoury and inconvenient short and long term environmental and cultural impacts of a the Gold Rush; a seismic event that unleashed global humanity on an unsuspecting traditional society and delicate Gondwanan ecosystems with little understanding, consideration or constraint.

‘Accordingly, if we have learnt anything from history, the concept of redress (indeed justice) should become central to the World Heritage bid; not just an add on or rhetoric. (FOBIF emphasis)

‘Continuing to ignore these impacts – and in fact continuing to see them as an intractable part of the ‘historic fabric’ of the landscape – should no longer be an acceptable or prudent perspective.

‘Today we have the knowledge and wherewithal to act to address these crises, both because it is the right thing to do, but perhaps more importantly, because it would finally be in line with the vision of ‘forever’ that, if we are honest, we all take for granted but know in our hearts is really in jeopardy.

‘Thus it behoves us – this generation – to act!

‘The future of course isn’t set in stone so we have an opportunity to create a new trajectory of recovery for the Box Ironbark Forests and Woodlands so severely impacted by the Gold Rush.

‘Arguably restoration should have commenced a long time ago, but it’s never too late..   Consequently, I would like to call for a campaign to leverage resourcing on the back of the World Heritage bid to further develop and scale up effective landscape restoration solutions that complement the bid’s  broader aims.

‘I think the World Heritage bid represents a great opportunity to build a more positive environmental legacy from here on. . One that is completely in line with the primary aims of awareness, education and thriving regional communities and towns. I look forward to the discussions, collaborations and transformative (indeed healing) actions ahead.’