Getting your message out

Kudos this week to the CFA, not just the local brigades, but the larger organisation that supports local brigades in talking with their communities. 

Exhibit #1. I had a letter from the Riddell CFA in my mail. We're at the end (we hope) of the fire season. We came through unscathed, unlike our brothers and sisters 50 kms the other side of Melbourne. The local brigade captain dropped us a personal note summing up the season, thanking everyone, urging us to keep on top of our fire plan. On the back side of the flyer, I saw an advert for fire extinguishers and realised I could by one (I need it in the shed) from the local brigade. On the to-do list. Thanks local brigade!

Exhibit #2. Driving over the hill to swim at Gisborne, I see a sign at the top of my road saying that there's a BBQ at the Cherokee Station. 

Not my territory, though I'd be welcome, but I love the immediacy of this way of sending a message. A small sign, on the intersection where you slow to turn to run up Gap to Cherokee. Everyone who lives up that road drives past here. They'll see this simple invitation to come along. Brilliant communication.

Exhibit #3. Bozos busted! Over coffee in my favourite cafe in Gisborne, the front page of a local newspaper has a story about CFA brigades jumping on some young lads deep in the Wombat State Forest. Out camping without a dickie bird of an idea of how to manage a fire. A great headline that sums up the situation in a mature way.

A brilliant photo - any local will see the whole story right there. Fire running along the big limbs, no fire pit, a huddle of you guys getting a talking to by a fire-suited brigade member. 

Below the photo, a straight-shooting story that doesn't mince words about the danger they created, but see as well that we've got a community problem here. Young men are drawn to go camping deep in the forest. Ignorance is dangerous for us all. Ignorance has been corrected, we hope. Community education at the sharp end. Thanks to the Midland Express for the story.

Exhibit #4. Official notice of a burn on the railway reserve near Riddell. 

Just when I thought the CFA couldn't do better, they did. In my email when I get home is a note from the environment team at the Shire, informing me of a burn in the rail reserve east of Riddell. It comes to me as President of Riddells Creek Landcare. Attached is the 20 page Burn Plan. I scan the document for native vegetation issues, and there it is, page 8:

Pre-burn assessment conducted by Karl Just on behalf of MRSC.   The Tree Banksias (Banksia marginata) in the north-west section of Websters Road should be excluded from any fire, as this species recruits adequately in the absence of fire and the death of the current old plants would be a major loss. - Threatened species should be monitored and managed across all sites. Of high priority is the collection of seed from the Large-flower Crane’s-bill Geranium sp. 1 at Websters Road, to conserve the gene pool and allow planting of more plants in suitable areas. Site listed in the National Recovery Plan for Dianella amoena – avoid machinery and traffic on areas were Dianella amoena Matted flax-lily occur.  

The Shire has kept watch on the native vegetation issue. It has let me know. In an era when our in-trays run with mail to which we are copied, we know not why, this is 'being kept in the loop' at its best - concise, unsolicited, relevant. Thanks to Michelle Wyatt at the Shire. I hope that burn goes nice and slow and uneventfully. 

There is so much for us in Landcare to learn from these four instances of getting the message out. Kudos to the CFA and all who sail on her!

The future

As a community, we face important decisions about how we will live in the place we call home, and we can't just leave it to government to work out what's best.

Here at Riddells Creek, we're poised at the edge of the ravenous city to the south and a region that wants the best of both worlds: country life close to the big smoke. Riddell will probably double its population in 20 years. The Minister for Planning has made it plain that the Macedon Ranges must take its 'fair share' of Melbourne's growth, and signed off zoning that will do just that. The Riddells Creek Structure Plan has the Amess Road site set for development, and 'investigation' slated for the Daffodil Farm site.

We generally leave decisions on infrastructure to government agencies, but maybe that’s not such a good idea. Agencies aren’t all that good with the discussion of community futures, and they tend to deal with problems one by one, not the interlocking forces in our landscape.

Take water for instance. What we do with waste water at the treatment plant is linked to the health of our creeks. What we do with stormwater in the Amess Road development ties in with this. It affects the safety of the town, and the flow in local creeks. Rosslynne Reservoir supplies drinking water but it also releases flow into Jacksons Creek, so we need that in the frame. Pop those issues inside a lower rainfall scenario with more intense rainfall events, and into a town and rural landscape with new people arriving, and it gets … complex! 

How do we discuss these things?  Early March, I went along to consultation on Sunbury’s Water Future. Western Water and Melbourne Water presented their options for three water services: water supply, waste water treatment, and stormwater management. Huddled around sticky note pads, we progresses dutifully through the options the experts had come up with, writing down positives and negatives. We had time for the briefest of discussions. Then the next option, and the next. 

Near the end of two hours, I felt like a rat in a maze. Our hosts left 15 minutes at the end to ask: was there anything we hadn’t talked about? Those of us still able to think looked down the long mental list we had been accumulating through the evening. I came up with one: have we gone as far as we can with reducing consumers' water use? A couple of other things went up on the board, but by now we were a dispirited bunch, ready to go home. 

Filling out the feedback form, it struck me: we were asked our opinions on the experts’ options, but we didn’t talk very much with each other. We hadn’t expanded our understanding of others’ views, looked at assumptions, or generated anything novel.  I know that opening the floor is an invitation to chaos. People's anger at not being listened to, their resentment about decisions made years ago, their exasperation with government, can spill out and ruin a perfectly good consultation. 

But is post-it notes on experts’ options as good as we can do? What about hearing how people think about the place of water in the place we live—gardeners, horticulturists, businesses, sporting clubs, new residents, environmental groups? People who think about water. 

Can people who live in the same place and care about how they live untangling these complex situations? I think so, though it’s a challenge. For sure and certain, what we do now will either keep us on familiar trajectories, or open new trajectories. We have a decade or two, and then we’re out of decades. 

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare, ross.colliver@bigpond.com