Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

The second successful FOBIF youth walk for 2015 took a circuit from Garfield Wheel to Forest Creek on Sunday September 6. [see our post above].

You can find a good account of the walk by John Ellis on the Chewton.net Facebook page. One interesting feature of this report is that it draws attention to the fact that the quiet bush atmosphere  was a bit degraded by the presence of a couple of trail bike riders circulating close to the wheel and kicking up dust in the nearby cyanide pits. The report provoked angry–well, abusive, actually– responses from Facebook readers keen to defend the riders’ rights to do their thing in the area.

Trail bike riding on registered bikes on formed roads is a perfectly legal activity. So, what’s the problem?

There are two, actually.

The first is noise. This concerns not only bushwalkers, but residents on town margins who find their quiet weekends poisoned by riders circulating, quite legally, on nearby private land. One rider can intrude on the lives of dozens of people.

The second is illegal riding off track on public land. This can cause serious erosion and destruction of important vegetation.

The responses to John Ellis’s Facebook post seem to show that there are some riders who don’t see either of these as anything to worry about–and that, it seems, is the real problem

Land managers and municipalities have wrestled with this stuff for some time. Solutions have been put up, but things appear, on anecdotal evidence, to be getting worse. We look at the solutions below, and ask why they haven’t worked.

The intrusion of trail bikes into a peaceful bushwalk [see above] is nothing new: so, shouldn’t we just get used to it? Isn’t it just part of sharing public land with different types of users?

That depends on what you mean by sharing. No one should be forced to share someone else’s noise, any more than they should be forced to share a smoker’s cigarette smoke. And the tearing up of illegal tracks has nothing to do with sharing.

Anyone familiar with our bushlands over the last decade or two will have noticed the relentless illegal intrusion of motor bikes into the remotest areas: the Columbine and Tarilta Creek valleys, for example,  two areas previously free of the machines, are now scarred by churned up illegal tracks.

Moto and 4WD curse attacks  Mount Alexander: Ballantinia Track at the Goldfields Track junction. There’s no lack of good ideas about preventing this kind of damage. What’s lacking, as usual, are the resources. Photo: Andy Bos

 

The latest area to suffer invasion is Mount Alexander Regional Park, where new tracks have appeared in the last six months, accessed through cutting through fences. In particular, the Ballantinia track seems victim to both motorbike and 4WD incursions.

What can managers do about this kind of activity?

Over the years we’ve seen a few initiatives taken by local councils, Park and Forest authorities to deal with trail bikes in particular. Here are some recommendations from the 2005 DSE Trailbike Options Paper: close off illegal tracks as soon as they’re made; invest in education; engage with riders; work with manufacturers and the retail industry to encourage appropriate marketing; provide alternative, properly managed venues…There have been calls for increased patrols, and even impoundment of bikes.

Great ideas, some of them. But the problem keeps getting worse.

Why? Well, for a start, all of the options cost money, and that’s the one thing Governments aren’t prepared to put into the process. What we seem to have ended up with is a series of policy documents, and A4 leaflets weakly urging riders to stay on roads and ride quietly. The writers of these documents don’t seem to realise that trail bikes aren’t made for people to cruise sedately through the woods checking out the wildflowers. A quick check of any dirt bike magazine will show you what they’re really for: adventure experience which is very hard on the earth. Although these magazines are mainly concerned with legal motocross competitions the style is essentially the same as that engaged in by bush trail riders. Only the intensity is different.

A 2009 Queensland investigation found that 70% of surveyed riders admitted to riding illegally [the figure rose to 80% with younger riders]. Their reasons included: it’s convenient, there are fewer people, and it’s a more natural environment. Asked if they had concerns about this illegality, they highlighted the danger of irresponsible riders…Among 12 such concerns, however, ‘negative environmental impacts’ was listed 12^th.

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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.

We’re familiar with the weird habit some people have of mowing nature strips, but sparing patches of Gazaneas? These are a weed, but at least they have a pretty flower. But wheel cactus?

FOBIF has made enquiries to Vicroads about mysterious recent clearing of vegetation from the Castlemaine Maldon road. An area a few hundred metres long has been mown to the ground, and vegetation pushed towards the road edge, where it would be a nice receptacle for a passing idiot’s cigarette butt. One feature of the clearing effort is that the mower has spared a stalk of the cactus, one of the more unpleasant weeds in our region.

Vicroads, the responsible authority, has disclaimed any responsibility for the works, and has referred us to the shire council. We haven’t heard back from them at the time of writing, but note that the shire roadsides management policy is no longer available on the council website.

It’s probably fair to say that roadside vegetation is not appreciated in our community. Certainly that’s FOBIF’s impression after our experience of the Fryer’s Ridge Road works.There are dozens of roadside management strategies for state and local government authorities; ironically, one of the better ones is the one produced by Vicroads, the destroyer of several hundred ancient trees on the Western Highway. The problem is not lack of knowledge: it’s getting wide acceptance of the knowledge, and good practice based on it.

Post script: for more sad roadside tales, see David Griffith’s response to our ‘scalping story’.