Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

Julie Hurley giving an outline of the Victoria Gully project.

Twenty five walkers did the stroll from Clinkers Hill Reserve deep into the Poverty Gully area on last Sunday’s monthly FOBIF walk.

Walkers got a briefing from Julie Hurley on weed clearing and restoration work in the reserve by the Victoria Gully Group. Victoria gully runs through the Reserve down to Forest Creek at Tute’s cottage.

Although degraded like many other waterways in this district, the gully has great potential as a public asset, and the work done by the residents’ group has already enhanced the little known but very pretty reserve.

Pyronema fungus in fire ash: it weirdly resembles the glowing fire out of which it came.

Highlights of the walk included sighting of an echidna snoozing in a tree bole, and a series of weirdly spectacular fungi outgrowths from DSE’s autumn management burn. The fungus, Pyronema omphalodes, flourishes in fire ash, and bears an irresistible and intriguing resemblance to a glowing fire.

By taking an off track route up and down nameless gullies and ridge tops, Sunday’s walk showed how you can get a pretty remote feeling in our local bush–less than a kilometre from the town edge. And we got the chance to look over three contiguous DSE management burns: 2009, 2012 and 2013.

Some of Sunday's walkers at lunch.

The State Government has announced a ‘major milestone’ in its management burning program: ‘more than 200,000 hectares of planned burning already carried out on public land this financial year.’ And there’s more to come: we’re heading for the biggest artificial burning program in Victoria’s history.  

What is most striking about the government’s press release [printed in full below] is the  absence of any detailed notion of what, exactly, has been achieved in this welter of burning: the statistic is everything.

'To reduce the risk of bushfires on our parks and native animals': Ashby Track area, six months after a management burn, 2012.

Readers will remember that FOBIF wrote to the responsible ministers last year asking whether serious consideration had been given to the Royal Commission Implementation Monitor’s recommendation that the five per cent burning target be revised. The Monitor suggested that the rush to burn lots of country might be compromising public safety by encouraging burns in remote areas.

Although the responsible minister, Peter Ryan, had said that the government would ‘consider’ the monitor’s view, all we got from his spokesman (and from the Environment Minister Ryan Smith] was a lot of patronising generalities about fire. At the time we took this to mean: ‘No, we’re not paying any attention to what the Monitor says.’ The latest press release confirms this view.

There are interesting research projects under way on the effects of frequent burning on bushland in various habitats. There’s no evidence that these projects are influencing government policy, though it’s clear that many DSE officers are concerned about the likelihood that these practices will radically alter bush environments for the worse. It’s a bit like deliberately burning down your own house, while carefully researching the effect of fire on residential amenity.

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Julian Hollis

On a perfect Autumn day, geologist Julian Hollis recently led fourteen walkers on the second FOBIF walk of the year, through Kalimna Park. We were lucky to be accompanied by Julian, who is often seen walking in the area and has studied it for some years.

Kalimna is well known for its variety of native vegetation, and particularly its spring wildflowers. It is less well known for its 400 to 450 million years of geological history, but Julian’s explanations brought that history to life for the walkers.

On the way to Kalimna we stopped at the cutting on the north-east corner of the intersection of Campbell and Hargreaves Street. There, Julian explained that the cutting was created in the 1850s so that horses would not be faced with such steep inclines. Two interesting geological features of the cutting were the quartz reef and anticline shown in the photos below. 

Quartz reef and Anticline on the corner of Campbell and Hargreaves Streets

Heading towards the Tourist Road we stopped to take in the view to the south, where Mount Franklin and other peaks could easily be seen.

View over Castlemaine and beyond from Kalimna

In the couple of hours that followed we walked on tracks to the north-east of the Park and then back to the Mount Alexander Golf Course. Julian discussed the large anticline on the Tourist Road, as well as some intriguing tube-like holes in a rock face, and he pointed out evidence of early miners’ cottages. We now know that some of those miners were unlucky, because we saw a shaft in excess of 35 metres, in which no gold at all was found. 

Anticline on the Tourist Road (left). Looking into the deep mine shaft (right).

Many will have driven over the Tourist Road but fewer would know that its original gravel surface came from quarries in Muckleford. 

We also saw evidence of a little known geological ‘shear’, and Julian showed how rocks can be dated according to the impressions left by graptolites known to have lived at particular times.

Thanks to Julian for leading another informative and authoritative walk in our local area.

Dominique Lavie has sent us some extra photos which highlight the stunning colour and texture of the many rock formations we viewed. Her photos can be found here.