Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

Kid paced walking, and nature based conversation on a FOBIF family walk.

Join us on Sunday 18th September as we take a look at the lesser known but most beautiful bush section of the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens.

WHEN: 10am – 12pm
WHERE:  Tea rooms in the gardens (near the carpark closest to the Lake)
WHAT TO BRING: Thermos of favorite warm drinks, snack, sturdy foot wear your friends and family, big and small.

Head gardener, Gill Miller will give a short history of the park and local nature enthusiast, Naomi Raftery will lead a walk and talk for families around her favorite part of the gardens. There will plenty of opportunity to take a closer look and learn about the special colony of Eltham Copper Butterflies who call this patch home.

Last Friday [September 9], the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council held a briefing session in Chewton on its Historic Places Investigation report.

At the end of the briefing, this question came from an audience member:

‘If the Government accepts and implements every recommendation in your report, what difference will it make to the running of the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park?’

There was a silence, after which the VEAC presenter said: ‘While I think about that, I’ll tell you what difference it would make to the Mildura Hospital.’

This non answer was quite eloquent: it made clear that VEAC had failed to face the challenge of how to deal with heritage landscapes, as opposed to particular buildings, ruins or monuments.

A follow up question,  ‘Has VEAC squibbed the problem of dealing with landscapes, which contain both natural and cultural features?’ was answered as follows: ‘No: the Council has just decided to deal as a priority with the more manageable problems, which are already hard enough.’

The investigation Report, which can be found here, contains many interesting proposals on how to deal with historic places under threat from many sources. It’s a great pity the Report failed to confront the landscape question. Historic landscapes face the same problems as historic buildings: neglect, inappropriate use leading to damage, development threats. In addition, these landscapes have peculiar challenges, in which heritage and natural values can be seen to be in conflict. The problem of horses and cattle in the Alps is one example; and irresponsible prospecting in the Diggings Park is another.

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There are still some places available in the October 2016 Wetland Identification Course run by wetland expert, Damien Cook, and facilitator, Elaine Bayes. You can find out all about it by clicking on the image above.

Damien and Elaine are also leading our next FOBIF walk on September 18. The walk will take in Chewton’s highest mountain, ‘The Monk’, and Doug Ralph’s favourite long term unburnt bush near Eureka Mine.

Is this the best [that is, worst] year ever for the Oxalis weed? Since autumn we’ve seen the dense mats seem to get denser, to spread more widely, and to cover areas the weed’s never been strong in before. And now that it’s spring, those pretty yellow flowers seem to be everywhere.

Oxalis: among other things, it is, or should be, a challenge to fire managers

There are 800 species of Oxalis world wide, including six that are native to Australia: we have two in our region—O. exilis [Shady Wood Sorrel] and O. perrenans [Grasslands wood sorrel: it’s the host plant for the Grasslands Copper butterfly]. The commonest local species is the introduced—and very feral—Soursob [Pes caprae]. It was introduced into this country in 1839 as a garden ornamental, a fact which adds a bit more weight to Tim Lowe’s claim [in Feral Future] that gardeners have done more harm to our environment than miners…

Any gardener will tell you Oxalis is hard to control. According to a 2012 DSE report, it’s also likely to increase in threat after fire, its bulbs allowing it to spread into bare ground. This, we hope, will be in fire managers’ minds when they’re conducting reduction burns in areas where Oxalis is already rampant [the proposed burn on Mount Tarrengower, for example].

The Victorian Environmental Assessment Council (VEAC) will submit the Final Report on its Historic Places Investigation to the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change on Wednesday 31 August 2016, rather later than originally planned.  The report will be publicly released on Wednesday 7 September and will be made available on that day at www.veac.vic.gov.au.

Readers will recall FOBIF made a critical submission to the draft report in December last year. We’ll be curious to see if any of our criticisms have resulted in changes to the document.

Two information sessions on the report will be held not long after its release. One is in Melbourne. The other is in Chewton on Friday 9 September from 10:30 am to 11:30 am at the Chewton Senior Citizens Centre, 201 Main Road/Pyrenees Highway, Chewton (Car park access off Mount Street).

If you want to attend, you need to register with VEAC by phone [1800 134 803 (Free call outside Melbourne)] or email:  veac@delwp.vic.gov.au

The State Government will give its response to the report within six months.