Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

Over fifty children attended events at the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens this week as part of the FOBIF Winter School Holiday Program. Three events were held as part of the program, which aimed to give our local families an opportunity to learn about the Box Ironbark Forests and the wonderful world of books and nature studies.

The first event featured a live animal display with Jamie from Jamie and Kim’s mobile Zoo where kids and adults heard about, touched and fell in love with some of our most threatened Australian animals. This engaging presentation was followed by a treasure hunt for elements of our local forests in the largely unnoticed, but beautiful local bush part of the gardens.

The second event, ‘Habitat Stories’ was held in partnership with the Goldfields Library. Local story time hero Jess Saunders held the early primary school age children in awe with her reading of books about birds and habitat more generally with obligatory bubbles also. After lunch kids were introduced to another local, the White-winged Chough, and this bird’s mud brick nest building ability. Kids then followed on to make their own nest complete with furnishing from Barkers Creek, eggs and in one nest, “acorns, for toys”.

Judy Laycock and Alice Steel expertly ran the final event, which introduced botanical drawing to an engaged and diligent group of early primary school age children. Together the group learned about method, observation, recording and creativity by producing their own book of botanical drawings. Plenty of time was spent in the field capturing observations from the bark and various structural elements of the bush. A quick rundown on how to use watercolour and kids were away at adding colour to their drawings with beautiful results.

A massive well done and thank-you to all of the presenters and volunteers who have made the first FOBIF Winter School Holiday Program such a success. Thanks also to MASC for their support through their Strenghthening our Community funding. For further reading about why we love to do these things please see George Monbiot’s great article from The Guardian.

Photos of the three days can be viewed below. Click on photo to enlarge.

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Large Striped Greenhood (Pterosylis robusta)

It’s not the Himalayas, but FOBIF walkers found the ascent of Gough’s Range satisfying enough in glorious winter weather on Sunday. Greenhood orchids were on display, and a surprising stand of regenerating Casuarinas was an encouraging feature of a forest which is still recovering from past abuse.

From the top of the Range you can get great views to the east as far as Mount Alexander, and to the west to the Pyrenees, and this tiny forest offers an unexpected feeling of isolation from the outside world.

More photos below.

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Nioka Mellick-Cooper was the main organiser of this walk and she wrote the following post:

The first 2015 youth bush walk took place on the Mount Alexander (Leanganook) and was a great day. There were 28 people that came bright and early to do the scramble.

On top of Mount Alexander

We all met and wrote our names in the book at the Continuing Ed building, and then got on the buses and drove up to the starting place.

The walk was roughly 2 hours long (around 4km) and was a very enjoyable experience.

As we walked we saw many things including kangaroos browsing, and stopped at Dog Rocks for some morning tea. Here we heard a story told by Max from Connecting Country who kindly came on the walk with us, which had everyone entertained.

Max Schlachter talking to the group on Dog Rocks.

When we returned from the walk, lunch was provided, with a chance to refresh ourselves, and have a chat before we got back on the buses to return to Castlemaine.

The day was a success and we’re ready for the next one.

The Youth Bush Walk program is funded by the Mount Alexander Shire Council Youth Grants Program.

FOBIF is running three nature-based events for primary school children in the upcoming school holidays.  Places are limited and booking is essential. Information about the program can be found on this FOBIF page.

As of today, Parks Victoria has started on a program of grooming vegetation in Kalimna Park along the town edge and Moonlight Creek. The program aims at eliminating mainly exotic weeds as a fire protection measure [creating a roughly 50 metre wide border along the town edge], and removing blackberries and other weeds along the creek .

Groomed area near Bull Street: the removal of vegetation is part of a package of fire management actions.

Parks also intends to conduct a fuel reduction burn on Kalimna Point, but we’re not sure when or how this will be done. The Point is a problematic area: to quote from the website of the Friends of the park: ‘Kalimna Point is close to the town and from the early days was a destination for residents to visit as it allowed good views of the district. Between 1903 and the late 1920s the community planted a mix of European and Australian trees around the point and set up benches, a rotunda and a direction finder. Remnants of these avenue plantings and paths still exist.’

The views referred to are now blocked by Sugar Gums and other exotic planted trees. The Point is a bit of a sad relic of its former glory but is not without its charms, a colony of Eltham Copper Butterfly being one: and it’s still very popular with walkers. The Friends group has recently embarked on work on the Rotunda, and there’s definitely potential—with sensitive management—for a site of great recreational and botanical value there. See http://www.kalimnapark.org.au/friends-of-kalimna-park-castlemaine/

The 2015 State budget papers show that the Government’s Regional Infrastructure Fund is to be used to provide money to advance the design and construction of mountain bike tracks on the lower slopes of Mount Alexander.

As we have previously reported, the Mountain Bike Park is to be constructed in the Harcourt plantation, currently under management of Hancock Plantations, but soon to revert to public hands. You can find a map of the proposal here.

Previously, we had been led to believe that the plantation would be incorporated into the adjacent Mount Alexander Regional Park; it now appears that Parks Victoria is not keen on this move, and perhaps for good reasons. Legislation governing these parks includes the aims ‘to   preserve, protect and re-establish indigenous flora and fauna in the park’  and to ‘control exotic flora and fauna in the park.’ Given that we’re talking about a pine plantation, integration of the plantation would put park managers in a peculiar situation.

We’re not sure who will end up being responsible for the land–presumably it will be DELWP, once the plantation lease expires. The development proposal involves the construction of 16 trails totalling 34 kilometres, essentially around the contours of the site. We’ve been assured that the tracks will not spill over into the Regional Park. Currently there is some rogue bike riding on the steep upper slopes of the Mount. One of the challenges of track designers [and managers of the Great Dividing Trail] is to devise credible trails to divert riders away from destructive routes: and one of the challenges for Parks Victoria is to make sure the Park is protected effectively.