Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

So: what’s that grey discolouration in the water of Forest Creek at the Wheeler Street bridge, after rain last week?

Answer: It’s pollution runoff come down the gutter from somewhere in the town. We won’t speculate as to exactly what works–in fact, it’s reasonably common for rubbish and other pollutants to pour into the creek at this bridge, and pedestrians passing over it at almost any time of the year would be able to peer over the edge and get an insight into the less attractive aspects of our culture, as we’ve pointed out before.

The grey flow coming down the Wheeler Street gutter contrasts with the relatively clear water coming down Forest Creek. The great Australian tradition: pour it down the creek, and it will go away…

This discolouration is a bit different from your normal junk, though. It looks like construction waste, and it’s a reminder that there’s a great Australian tradition we could do without: treating our creeks as drains carrying the debris of our industrial system out of sight. That grey colour puts the observer in mind of…that’s right: sludge.

Sludge: a toxic mix of ‘thick, semi-liquid slurry of sand, clay, gravel and water that flowed out of mining operations.’

Readers of one of last year’s horror publications, Sludge—disaster on Victoria’s goldfields (Latrobe Uni Press and Black Inc) will know that throughout the second half of the 19^th century mining sludge in terrifying volumes was dumped into our waterways. In fact, the embankments at that point in Forest Creek were built in 1860 to divert sludge from mining works  away from the town of Castlemaine. Those walls have a kind of charm nowadays, but we shouldn’t forget that they were built to turn the creek into a  drain.

FOBIF recommends Sludge as a good read for Coronavirus times. It’s not exactly joyous reading, but it’s a handy reminder of times when there was virtually no restraint on industry’s tendency to trash the environment, when protests by farmers and citizens against the destruction of our waterways were powerless against mining interests. Those were the days when ‘cows wandering down to drink at Campbells creek in Castlemaine routinely got bogged and half drowned (in sludge)’; when Laanecoorie lost half its capacity in its first 40 years, silted up with sludge; when sand slugs clogged up the Loddon at Newstead, reducing its capacity to form deep pools (they’re still there). Levee banks five feet high were powerless to protect farmland against the flow. The situation was in some ways bizarre: a bloke at Fryerstown got a permit to withdraw 68 million litres of water a day from the Loddon—twice its actual flow!

These are practices we’re still paying for, as the book points out. It’s handy to keep that in mind when people complain about ‘green tape.’

Meanwhile, Forest Creek is sometimes a striking reminder that bad habits die hard.

Speaking of tradition: we occasionally hear complaints that conservation reserves ‘lock up’ public land, and deprive people of their traditional rights, including the right to drive anywhere they like.

The fact that millions of Australians visit our reserves each year rather dents the ‘locked up’ claim. But it’s  true that sometimes conservation does require restrictions of access, or at least of some kinds of access. And here’s a possible example: maybe this track on the west side of Mount Tarrengower should be closed, to prevent further damage:

Tarrengower, west side: this track goes nowhere, and appears to exist solely to provide sport for people who love tearing up the land.

The track in question doesn’t serve a useful purpose, unless you count as ‘useful’ the chance for tough people in heavy vehicles to rip up a bit of dirt. The process is simple, and has the inevitable result of forming deep grooves, some nearly a metre deep. These become undriveable, and so the drivers in question just form another road, and repeat the dose:

Ruts on tracks relentlessly develop into erosion channels.

The result is, of course, erosion, especially on the steeper sections of this track.

As the track deteriorates and becomes undrivable even for the toughest of tough guys, new tracks are created, as seen on the left of this picture.

FOBIF has asked Parks Victoria if it has a policy about keeping this track open. It’s not always easy to close tracks, because of that old chestnut about ‘locking up’ the land: but in this case, it’s hard to believe anyone could credibly claim a public benefit in leaving it open. The environmental damage is clear. Not all traditions are good–and the ‘tradition’ of tearing up the country for fun is no better than pouring sludge over it.