Connecting agendas

A couple of years ago, at a meeting on the formation of a Landcare group in Gisborne, each of the Landcare groups around Gisborne spoke briefly about what they were doing. A woman from Bullengarook Landcare ran through what they were doing, and I was struck by her energy. I'd never got around to connecting with her, then on the trail of creek stuff, I did. 

That bit of country is important. It's right at the top of what's called the Jacksons Creek sub-catchment, the headwaters of the Maribyrnong catchment. Here's Riddell ...

If we pan out, here's us in the context of the curve of Macedon, our lovely little bit of the Great Dividing Range.

Tucked up in the south western corner is Bullengarook....

When I drive to Bacchus Marsh (and on to that horrible road to Geelong), I love the way the bush comes in around the cleared country through Bullengarook. 

An email to a address listed in the MRSC community groups page, and a couple of missed calls later, I finally got on the phone to Cherie Salmon, who's on the committee of Bullengarook Landcare. 

We covered a lot of ground quickly. Cherie is committed to keeping Landcare efforts rooted in the community, and smart when it comes to working with government. She told me the group is using Melbourne Water's Stream Frontage program, as we have in RCL. The early days of Landcare in Bullengarook saw revegetation in key areas. 

But properties turn over, and the group is in a new phase of educating new people as they move in how to look after their properties. Bullengarook Landcare have it as a priority to be a visible part of community life, and part of this is to team up with other local groups, like the CFA and the school, to run joint events. This gives Landcare a presence in the community.

I asked Cherie the next step on creeks in their area. One priority is to build on what's already in place and showcase what's been done with streamsides. Invite in the neighbours and others in the area to see what's possible. This educates people about how creeks and properties can go together and be good for each other. 

When you show people what happens when you fence off and plant out streamsides, and when they see the different ways that can be done on different properties, they start building their own picture of what they could do on their own place. 

And when they hear someone just like them talking about what they have done, how they got started, what the setbacks have been, they start thinking: 'That's the kind of person I can be.' Hearing it face-to-face, the motivations to care are felt as much as grasped cognitively. 

Dean Platt has organised creek walks/creek visits for us around Riddell every few years. These are powerful events. They are days I remember back to, and they raise possibilities that take years to work out on your own place.
Here we are in 2015 walking along Sandy Creek:

One of the strengths of Landcare is that local groups do what they want to do, but one of the liabilities that brings is that we may not tune into what other groups are doing, or pick moments when we could band together for concerted action.

I asked Cherie for the prospects for concerted action between Landcare groups along Jacksons Creek. We're meeting at Riddell to think about our priorities, with a view to connecting what we want to do with other Landcare groups, and to various government agendas, like the Healthy Waterways Strategy and MRSC's Biodiversity Strategy. Perhaps Bullengarook will be interested in our priorities.
 
Cherie struck a cautionary note about working with government agendas. Her view is that in Landcare, we really need to understand how the landholders along creeks think and what they want for creeks, so that whatever bright ideas we have in the Landcare group, we are always getting behind those who live on creeks, who are closest to the action and can do most. This doesn't mean going along with ill-informed opinion, but it does mean understanding how people think and hearing what's important to them, so we can build from this.

Of course, it's bigger than creeks, and bigger than planting out along creeks. As Cherie said to me:

"Nature is the ultimate community asset and unless people know what’s in their own backyards they won’t advocate for conservation and protection".

Creeks are a way of getting started, at a time when attitudes are shifting toward looking after creeks, and away from the disregard and abuse of creeks that was once common - let me show you the old domestic tip on the edge of Sandy Creek that went with the house I bought, then walk you 100 metres along Gap Road towards town and show you the former community tip, now sagging and leaching into Sandy Creek! No need to mention eroding gullies in country cleared to the creeklines - we see it every time we drive.

It might have worked once - get rid of your rubbish in the creek, water your stock, clear as much as you can. But there's a lot of us humans around nowadays, and the country just won't stand for that kind of treatment anymore. And we know more. We can do better than we have.

It falls to Landcare to lead - to start things off, initiate, educate, prod people into action, show them a pathway. Just like understanding the physical landscape, understanding in detail our social landscape is a step towards being able to influence our neighbours.

Think of it as connecting agendas: ours in Landcare with our neighbours along our creeks, and then with the agendas of government.