Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

The organisers of the upcoming  Alan ‘Curly’ Hartup exhibition have supplied us with the following text:

A wonderful exhibition of nature photographs by leading amateur photographer and longtime resident of Newstead, Alan Jesse Hartup (1915 –2004) will be opened at the Newstead Railways Arts Hub on Saturday October 10^th at 3pm.

This exhibition is largely of bird life in Newstead and the surrounding districts, from Alan’s vast array of black and white photographs and colour slides. This selection of 20 works of black and white and prints from colour slides, span over 60 years of Alan’s impressive output. Beginning with his beloved 35m Voigtlander camera, he progressed to the brilliant level of work he achieved with his Mamiya and Rollieflex 2¼ square cameras and his great ability with dark room techniques.

Alan has been represented widely in amateur circles and has been a central figure in promoting, selecting and judging photography in Victoria and interstate. In preparing for this exhibition we have been reminded what a wonderful legacy Alan has left with images of the beauty and richness of our surroundings. He was a man at one with the natural world and one who took a vital interest in our environment and how to care for it. The exhibition was prompted by local field naturalists Geoff Park and Mrs. Joan Butler.

We, members of Alan and Rita’s family, appreciate the opportunity to show his work.

More details can be found in this flyer.

After a fair bit of consideration, FOBIF has been experimenting with a Facebook page, as a way of varying our approach to informing the public about matters in our region, and maybe of reaching a new audience. The material we publish there will be variations on what we put on this site, and there’ll be links back to here.

We’re launching the page today with a slide show of photos of the late Doug Ralph. The page can be found here or by clicking on the Facebook icon to the right of this post.

If you’re into Facebook, add us to your friends – and add your knowledge and ideas to the material we’ve put out!

Try a walk in the bush at the Garfield Water Wheel, Castlemaine, Sunday 6th September, meeting at 9.30 am outside Castlemaine Continuing Education in Templeton Street.

Youth Sustainability Champion, Nioka Mellick-Cooper, is a Year 9 student at the Castlemaine Secondary College. She is leading her fourth youth walk as part of the Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests bushwalking program, and is generously funded by the Mount Alexander Shire’s Youth Grants. Nioka has received two grants to run her walks program and is looking forward to the Fathers’ Day ramble. See here for the post on the Mount Alexander youth walk which took place earlier this year.

“We took a few wrong turns on the last walk and got a bit lost, but it was all good fun. We hope to see some new people try their hand at bushwalking this time around, with or without your without a dad-type figure in tow.”

The walk will take just over 2 hours and will cover around 4-5km. Previous walks have been in the Muckleford forest, at the Eureka Reef, and Mount Alexander.

Arrive back at the carpark area for a vegetarian BBQ before returning to Castlemaine. All young people will receive a complementary gift pack. Please book a spot by phoning 54724609 or 0431 219 980.

The childrens walk planned for  Sunday August 30 in the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens has had to be cancelled due to ill health. Our apologies for the short notice: we’ll let readers know when alternative arrangements are made.

Julie Whitfield gave a rousing talk on local butterflies to Newstead Landcare last Thursday. Those who missed it are recommended as a consolation to log on to a terrific Radio National Off Track program, A world without butterflies in which [among many other things] Whitfield takes a well aimed pot shot at the popular book A very hungry caterpillar. Why shouldn’t a good childrens book also be biologically accurate?

There are about 400 species of butterflies worldwide, of which about 130 can be found in Victoria—and 40-50 in this region. One surprising piece of info in Thursday’s talk was the revelation that the humble mistletoe is a butterfly hotspot…so, if you’re strolling past an accessible patch of this much misunderstood semi parasite, take time to peer in.

‘As we develop a better understanding of bushfire risk in different localities, we will supplement our investment in planned burning with other works
such as slashing and burning and mowing while aiming for the least impact on people and our ecosystems.’ [Our emphasis]

That’s from one of DELWP’s more recent publications, Bushfire management engagement strategy 2014-8. ‘Aiming for the least impact on…our ecosystems.’ Fire management practices seem to have improved in recent years, but we’re not sure if the ‘least impact’ idea has been communicated to road crews.

A solid group of FOBIF walkers led by Richard Piesse dropped in to the Tarilta Valley from Porcupine Ridge on Sunday in brisk but fine winter weather. There was good bird watching and plenty of fungi on show, and the valley is showing fair but patchy recovery from DSE’s disastrous 2012 fire exercise.

The group left the valley via the impressive rock cleft and waterfall ridge [which, unfortunately, rarely sees much water – see first photo below], and wound its way through an isolated subsidiary valley to the Great Dividing Trail.

Click on photos below to enlarge. Photographers are Bernard Slattery and Noel Young.

Noel Young sent us the following observations:

The bird life was fairly active in the area, and I was able to identify the following either by site or call:
Thornbill flocks, White throated Treecreeper, Golden Whistler, White eared Honeyeater, Grey Shrike-thrush, Spotted Pardalote, Long billed Corella, Sulphur crested Cockatoo, Crimson Rosella and Horsfield’s Bronze Cuckoo. 

 Two Black Wallabies crossed the Porcupine ridge road on the way in.

 I didn’t attempt a plant list, but there were several species of wattle flowering, including an unusually common occurrence of A gunni. (Ploughshare), a number of flowering Sundews, and an occasional Hovea and white or pink heath flowers. No flowering orchids were found as far as I know.

Following its objections to roadworks scalping valuable vegetation from the Fryers Ridge, FOBIF has written to the Environment Minister asking for clarification of policy on vegetation management of roadsides.

The letter reads, in part:

“Forest managers have told us that, though this method of vegetation management is not ‘ideal’, budgetary restraints prevent them from using more labour intensive methods—like selective removal of obstructive vegetation, or moderate grooming. Further, there seems to be a common assumption in the Department that ‘priority to safety’ means absolute disregard for environmental values, when it should mean: careful management of vegetation to maintain sight lines and encourage sensible driver behaviour.

“Our group is fully aware of the necessity to maintain proper fire access roads, and to manage adjacent vegetation to minimise the likelihood of accidents. We believe, however, that this should be done with minimum of disturbance to  environmental values. We assume that Victoria adheres to the common principle ‘avoid, minimise, mitigate and lastly offset’ in its road management policy?

“Given that managers often justify crude practices by appealing to budget limitations, we have four questions:

1. What is the Department’s [and the Government’s] policy on roadside scalping?
2. What is the Department’s 2015-6 budget for a. Forest management and b. conservation reserve management, compared to the same figures of 2005-6?
3. Do the native vegetation clearance regulations which have been the subject of recent community consultation apply to the Department’s own managers?
4. Is there any monitoring of the effects of roadside clearing on the environment?”

As this post is being written, controversy sputters over the destruction of 900 ancient river red gums as part of improvements to the Western Highway: seemingly another exercise by government in which ‘safety’–or in this case, speed–sweeps aside any other considerations.