Guildford Plateau – an upside-down landscape

Posted on 22 November, 2021 by fobif

We don’t often see mesa-like hills in Victoria but the Guildford Plateau is a wonderful example. The story starts around 40 million years ago when the ancient Loddon River carved its way from the Glenlyon headwaters. This was a vigorous stream in a high rainfall period. The deep valley was full of rainforest species, ferns and maybe the odd freshwater crocodile. Over time the Loddon valley filled with clay, sand, gold and gravel forming a stream bed up to 50 m thick.

But in one catastrophic event, within the last 4.5 million years, the Glenlyon volcanoes sent a rush of lava northwards. Lava spread like honey seeking any valley it could find and instantly buried the ancient gravels and their contained gold.

Since then, erosion has lowered the entire surrounding landscape – but not the hard basalt. The basalt was carved away in some places but mostly it was left high and dry as a series of isolated mesas, like our beautiful Guildford Plateau.

Looking north from the old Guildford railway station. Hard basalt forms the top of the plateau. The basalt covered ancient gravels which are now visible in places along the lower plateau slopes, and at the old railway station.

This is the second post in our geology series written by Clive Willman. 

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FOBIF 2021 breakup

Posted on 15 November, 2021 by fobif

Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests is having a BBQ at Bronwyn Silver’s place in Walmer on Monday 13 December.

It starts at 6 pm and the address is 1036 Muckleford-Walmer Road, Walmer.

BYO
*  food to share, including something for the BBQ if you like
*  plates, glasses, cutlery
*  drinks
*  a chair

All FOBIF members and supporters are welcome. Enquires Bronwyn: 0448751111.

Last year’s breakkup.

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What? Rainforest valleys at Guildford?

Posted on 1 November, 2021 by fobif

Ordinary looking rocks can tell some amazing stories: that’s the magic of geology. We’ve asked geologist Clive Willman to write an occasional series of posts on what the stones of our region are telling us. This is his first:

The Kennedy Street River Gravels – Remnants of the ancient Barkers Creek

An ancient river bed is beautifully exposed in Kennedy Street Castlemaine, along the west flank of Agitation Hill. This was an energetic stream in a period of high rainfall that was able to move sizable pebbles.

The mainly quartz pebbles were eroded from nearby reefs and their incessant bouncing along the stream bed sculpted many into rounded shapes. Similar deposits of sand, gravel and gold are preserved on nearby hills.

On Kennedy Street: what looks like an untidy  embankment tells an epic story.  These river gravels are the remnants of the ancient bed of Barkers Creek.

They are all remnants of the ancient valleys of Forest and Barkers creeks. Over time the streams meandered away, cutting deeper into the landscape, but the old deposits were left high and dry as hard hills. Fossil pollens at Guildford tell us these were cool rain-forested valleys, full of Nothofagus (the southern beeches).

Barkers and Forest creeks have a truly ancient history starting perhaps 40 million years ago, and remarkably, as the map below shows, the modern streams are still close to the original valleys of their ancestors.

This is the first post in our geology series written by Clive Willman. 

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Duck shooting: Victoria is still the lonely hunter in eastern Australia

Posted on 1 November, 2021 by fobif

Regional Victorians opposed to Duck Shooting has written to Mount Alexander Shire urging it to take a more proactive role in getting rid of shooting at Cairn Curran.

FOBIF, along with Bird Life Australia (Castlemaine district) and the Castlemaine Field Naturalists Club, has endorsed the letter, which is a follow up to one sent in May.

Sanctuary or hunting ground? Victoria is the only eastern state to allow the recreational shooting of birds.

Council doesn’t have the power to ban duck shooting at the reservoir—but it could put pressure on Coliban Water, which does have that power.

Recreational shooting of birds is banned in NSW, Queensland, WA and the ACT, but not in Victoria.

The substance of the letter is as follows:

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…Our petition to have bird shooting banned, and the area made a sanctuary, followed Council’s motion in March 2019 to advocate for a ban on duck shooting at Cairn Curran.

Continue reading →

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Is PV running a chain of amusement parks?

Posted on 1 November, 2021 by fobif

FOBIF has given in to temptation again, and had a shot at the consultation process on Parks Victoria’s land management strategy.

Our submission concentrated on two points:

Scented Bush-pea, Loop Track, Castlemaine Diggings NHP: to look after endangered species, Parks Victoria needs more resources, not vague gestures.

  1. The draft strategy is completely vague on how Parks Victoria will handle the biodiversity crisis—a crisis everyone now knows about since the Auditor General’s scathing report last month.
  2. The strategy goes gaga on the matter of private commercial developments in parks. FOBIF is not opposed to tour operators working in parks: but this strategy makes such operations into ‘partnerships’ which appear to be substitutes for proper park management.

These problems can be summed up in a simple statement: Park management is under resourced. Until recently it seemed that the only people in the universe who couldn’t see this were the State Government and Parks Victoria itself. It was surprising, therefore, to see Parks’ response to the Auditor General’s report:

‘Parks Victoria agrees with the Auditor General’s characterisation of both the problems being experienced by Victorian biodiversity and the urgent need for significantly increased focus and resourcing to better address these large and real challenges.’ (FOBIF emphasis)

This is a welcome change from previous Parks’ statements, which tended to acknowledge disastrous budget cuts while making loopy claims that ‘the future is one of excellence.’

Unfortunately the strategy doesn’t face up to the under resourcing problem, preferring instead to wrap it up in woolly statements about future improvements.

The substance of FOBIF’s submission is as follows:

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We support the emphasis given in the draft to the importance of working with Traditional Owners and adapting to climate change.

We would like to offer the following more critical comments:

Continue reading →

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