The 2017 FOBIF AGM is on at 7.30, 10 July 2017 in the Ray Bradfield Rooms. Guest speaker will be Brian Bainbridge from the Merri Creek Management Committee. All are welcome and you can find out all about it here.
If you would like to join our committee, forms are available here.
The selection criteria are very broad for this year’s TOGS Cafe exhibition, Mountains and Waterways. All photos submitted that are taken around water and mountains in our region will be included on our Flickr site and considered for the exhibition. The closing date for photos is 1 August 2017. To find out more, see our earlier post or contact Bronwyn on 54751089.
We have included some sample photos below.
Black-fronted Dotterel. Cairn Curran. Photo by Geoff Park, 29 October 2014
Picnic Point, Cairn Curran. Photo by Geoff Park, 28 Feb 2017
Columbine Creek. Photo by Bronwyn Silver, 21 January 2017
Mount Alexander. Photo by Bernard Slattery, 26 July 2012
So it’s been the driest June on record around much of Victoria. Castlemaine weather station recorded 7 mls of rain for the month, compared to long term average of 56 mls. The previous lowest June rainfall was 13 mls in 1969. And it’s been pretty bleak into the bargain—rather too many grey but unproductive days.
There are interesting bright spots, however. For a few weeks now, large areas along Porcupine Ridge have been blooming with extensive stands of Woolly Wattle [Acacia lanigera]: quite a spectacular sight from the Ridge road:
The wattle season is on: dense Acacia lanigera regrowth along the Loop Track, July 3. It’s very beautiful, but casts doubt over the effectiveness of severe ‘fuel reduction’ burns.
Wattle stands in this area are dense and up to nearly two metres high—impossible to negotiate with any ease. Interestingly, this area was the recipient of a very severe DSE fuel reduction exercise in 2011–supposedly a ‘mosaic burn’– in which large areas of the fire zone were reduced to ash, and numerous big trees killed. Recovery has been patchy, with some areas showing good species regeneration. On the whole, however, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that this ‘reduction’ exercise has actually increased the fuel load. Dense shrub and tree regrowth has replaced tussock woodland, and the area is definitely harder to negotiate on foot than the adjacent unburnt areas.
Loop Track, November 2010: DSE’s fuel reduction exercise looked like a bushfire, and its long term effectiveness is doubtful.
What conclusions are to be drawn from the Loop Track fire? In the absence of careful and detailed pre and post burn monitoring, caution is needed. We’ve found it impossible to get from DELWP a considered opinion on the effectiveness of this burn, from the point of view of ecology and fire prevention.
One conclusion can be made with certainty, however: not all fuel reduction burns are the same. It is lazy thinking to declare that ‘there’s a fuel load, we need to burn the bush’. It’s important to bear this in mind because there are still persistent calls for more ‘preventative’ burning of our public bushlands. One such is in the recently released Parliamentary inquiry into fire season preparedness. This inquiry, after fielding a number of submissions on the subject of fuel management, opts for a risk reduction policy, but with a minimum 5% hectare target. Apparently the MPs on the committee couldn’t see the contradictions in this approach, although they’ve been pretty obvious for quite a while.
Apart from a lengthy consideration of the political dispute over the CFA and the United Firefighters Union, the Parliamentary enquiry largely rehashed opinions on various matters to do with fuel reduction, ecology, and public safety, and it’s depressing to see that no advance seems to have been made on these matters in recent years. The report is worth reading, however, for its discussion of indigenous burning practices.
As outlined in a previous post, this year’s FOBIF AGM will be held at 7.30, July 10 in the Ray Bradfield Rooms. Details including how to nominate for the FOBIF Committee can be found here. Supper will be served and everyone is welcome.
Our speaker will be Brian Bainbridge, Ecological Restoration Planner, Merri Creek Management Committee. His topic will be Single species – many outcomes.
Single species conservation projects can have wide-ranging benefits when pursued in a holistic manner. Projects to secure local populations of Matted Flax Lily and Plains Yam Daisy have led Merri Creek Management Committee to build a deeper understanding of the Merri Creek’s changing ecology and the potential for landscape-scale conservation. The projects have stimulated fresh approaches to engaging with community.
Plains Yam Daisy
Last Tuesday the Mount Alexander Shire held an info session on plans to construct flood control levees along Campbells Creek.
The proposed levee plan is the result of consultations on the 2015 Flood Management plan. This extensive document can be found here. It arose out of the 2011 floods, said to be a one in a hundred year event, and has been modified after consultation.
Campbells Creek footbridge, September 2016. Under current proposals, footbridges over the creek will not have railings: flood debris will be able to float over them.
Current levee proposals include:
The proposed levees are designed to resist one in twenty or one in a hundred year floods, depending on the location.
The 2015 plan’s proposal to build a 2 metre high levee along the creek opposite the Railway Hotel has been abandoned after strong community opposition. The current plan proposes a one metre high levee.
The proposals, which are estimated to cost $3.5 million dollars, have not so far been subjected to a cost benefit analysis. One third of the cost would be borne by Council.
One interesting feature of the various reports on the floods is that they demolished the idea, circulated at the time, that Landcare plantings had worsened the problem. A flood model was used ‘to test the effects of removing vegetation from the waterways. This resulted in marginally lower flood levels in the creeks but not significantly enough to prevent over-floor flooding to affected properties.’
It is significant that proposed works deal with the ‘Castlemaine-Campbells Creek flood plain’: in other words, authorities are dealing with the brute fact that past planning decisions have allowed building on that flood plain, with all the resultant problems.
The Victorian Environment Assessment Council has opened an investigation into the public forests of the central west area. These include the Wombat, the Wellsford and the Pyrenees forests. All these were proposed for logging under Vicforests Forest utilisation plan 2017.
The purpose of the VEAC investigation is to:
Submissions to the investigation are invited until 21 August 2017. They can be sent to veac@delwp.vic.gov.au To make an online submission click here
Drop-in community forums will be held in locations in or near the investigation area in July 2017. Details will be provided shortly.
A draft proposals paper and a final report are to be prepared, with the final report due by March 2019.
OK, it’s cold, and maybe not wet enough. Some quality reading to brighten a winter evening: the June newsletter of our neighbours, Wombat Forestcare, available online here.
Narrow leaf bitter pea, Castlemaine Botanic Gardens, Spring 2013. There are three Daviesia species in the Mount Alexander region.
This edition has the usual terrific info on fungi, the case against logging the Wombat and [among other things], the third article in John Walter’s series on ‘egg and bacon’ plants. This one is on three species of Daviesia found in the Wombat: Hop Bitter Pea, Narrow Leaf Bitter Pea and Gorse Bitter Pea. All three can be found in the Mount Alexander region too. If you [like many of us] are frustrated by the difficulty of telling the difference between pea plants, you should find this article pretty useful.
Ian Higgins led 18 people on a terrific walk along Campbells Creek last Sunday on the fourth FOBIF excursion for the year. The group joined the walking and cycling track at the back of Tonks in Lewis Drive, followed the track for several kilometres and then crossed the creek heading back through varied landscapes to the starting point.
Ian has been a driving force in the regeneration of this area as part of Friends of Campbells Creek Landcare over a number of decades. He gave an account of its history, identifying what had been planted, the progress of the plantings, and weeds that had been tackled. The efforts of many people have achieved a remarkable transformation of public land that used to be inaccessible, weed infested, and used for private grazing and rubbish dumping. McKenzies Hill Landcare Group has also been part of this project.
There were many highlights in the morning including the female flower of the Drooping She-oak and numerous large Hakeas in bloom.
Left, Female flower of Drooping She-oak, photo by Frances Cincotta. Right, Bushy Needlewood, photo by Noel Young.
The following photos were taken by Noel Young.
The next walk on 16 July will be through Faraday, taking in some interesting vegetation corridors with lovely remnant trees, and the shire’s only stand of Narrow-leaved Peppermints Eucalyptus radiata. Easy walking, about 7 km. For more information contact Bernard Slattery on 5470 5161.
The 2017 FOBIF AGM will be held on Monday July 10 at 7.30 pm at the Ray Bradfield Rooms, beside Victory Park, Castlemaine.
Brian Bainbridge
Our speaker this year will be Brian Bainbridge who has recently moved up to our district. For many years Brian has been a member of the Merri Creek Management Committee formed in 1989 to preserve and restore the natural and cultural values of the creek. He has been employed as the Ecological Restoration Planner and involved with Plains Yam Daisy and the Golden Sun Moth projects. More details of his talk will be posted on this site soon. An interview with Brian can be found here.
Do you want to play a role on the FOBIF committee? Or nominate someone else to the committee? All that’s needed is a piece of paper signed by the nominee, a nominator and a seconder–all FOBIF members. There’s no need of an official form, but for convenience, here’s a sample: Continue reading
White Everlasting Daisy (Chrysocephalum baxteri)
Slime Mould
Dunns Reef
Tall Greenhoods
Gnat Orchid
Blue Caladenia
Downy Grevillea (Grevillea alpina)
Coliban river upstream of the Gibbons bridge
Coliban river upstream of the Gibbons bridge.
Coliban river upstream of the Gibbons bridge.
Sailors Gully ruin
Loddon River near Vaughan
Cortinarius archeri
Mycena subgalericulata
Cortinarius rotundisporus
Cortinarius cystidiocatenatus,
Ramaria sp.
Pink Heath
Mount Alexander
Mount Alexander
Click on image for info/order page
Click on image for info/order page
Click on image for info/order page