On the mid-slopes

We were tipped out of covid straight into Glasgow and the climate change conference. I was ready for the liberty of moving around as I pleased for a while, and doing some shopping in Melbourne, but here I was, hurried along by news and commentary to the next crisis. Survive a pandemic, and it’s back to saving the planet.

I was sceptical of what might be conjured out of slippery politicians and a world economy set in its ways, but when a friend emailed me a link to David Attenborough’s speech, I hit the link. Dear old Attenborough ascends the stage. How many times has he done this, with that rising inflection in his voice, that urgency? How long before we connect the dots and act?

David Attenborough speaks at the start of #COP26

His speech was an elaborate media event, with backing audio track and simultaneous video screens that layered data and reportage. Ordinary citizens faced the camera and said what they felt, what they wanted. With each heartfelt plea, I felt a flush of hopefulness, but it quickly drained away.

The ‘Yes we can!’ fervour was wearing me down. It’s not that we don’t need to act, but a bit of sadness would make for a more complete picture of humans in 2021, alongside this insistent drumming up of belief in ourselves as a species.

What would I have said, I wondered, in 5 seconds with the camera? Something like: ‘I will do what I can, but my heart is aching at what we have lost – time, species, wonderful natural places. It’s hard to bear, and hard to act when grief gets a grip.’

As the world argued over targets and resolutions, I walked into Barrm Birrm and found my way to the mid-slopes. It was a warm afternoon. The lomandra was in flower, along with more murnong than I remember seeing in previous years. The grasses ran away under the trees and the sun slanted across the hillside. The currawong sent its long looping cry into the valley. 

The mid-slopes of Barrm Birrm, Spring afternoon

Can Country speak to a whitefella, the way it once used to the people who managed this land? Can we get a little less human-centric in the way we see the place we live? I know we’re the problem, and the solution, but what about other voices? What does the bush have to say?

I stood and listened. I waited. I thought about parts per million ticking steadily higher and coking coal being shipped in long trains to ports in marginal Queensland electorates.

‘Shush’ said the grasses, and left me standing quiet in the sunshine.

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

One mystery solved

7th October

Our Landcare group has made good progress in clearing the gorse and bluebell creeper from the northern corner of Barrm Birrm. Surrounded by property owners who are letting these two weeds run loose on their properties, this is a holding operation that will need attention yearly, but it’s a joy to be out in the Spring, doing something useful instead of fretting about the state of the world.

The Booths cutting and painting gorse regrowth

The acacias are finished, but now it is time for the Slender Bitter-pea (Daviesia leptophylla), yellow and orange flowers spreading across the mid slopes on a nondescript plant that is suddenly everywhere and vibrant with colour. And the Love Creeper is winding its tendrils up around anything it can find and blooming a soft blue.

Slender Bitter Pea in bloom on the mid slopes of Barrm Birrm

The gates put up by Council on the public roads into Barrm Birrm seem to be working! If you know the terrain, it’s easy enough to drive in on other tracks, but the gates are slowing the tide of opportunistic 4WDs.

It is a constant source of bewilderment to visitors that this bushland is actually private land, subdivided in the 1880s (in an office in London I’ve been told!) into 165 allotments ranging in size from 0.3 hectares to 5.2 hectares. The land was sold off in the 1970s to people who hoped one day to be able to build. That won’t happen: the land can’t handle 165 septic systems, and the bush is now a rare and wonderful place to enjoy the natural world.

The Shire has named Barrm Birrm a valued asset in its Biodiversity Strategy, and the land has recently been listed by the Catchment Management Authority in its prospectus of worthwhile projects awaiting government funding.

Just how Barrm Birrm will be returned to public ownership remains a mystery, but at least another mystery has been solved. Last Clean Up Australia day, as we scoured the hillside for rubbish, the favoured party places of Barrm Birrm were miraculously clear of broken bottles and cans. We wondered at the sudden change: had the party boys somehow turned responsible?

Slim pickings at 2021 Clean Up Australia day

Now another explanation has appeared. A dancer staying at my place has been up there, clearing the ground in order to dance freely in the middle of the bush, on those big cleared areas. One mystery solved.

You’ll be dancing too, if make your way to Barrm Birrm and find the chocolate lilies and dianella, coming into bloom in late October.

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

Not so simple Spring

6th September 2021

Spring is the simple season. It says ‘Grow’. It says: breakout, bud and flower, push to the light that lengthens each day, go to the warmth. Don’t mind the reversals to cold weather, keep going. Grow! That frisky feeling, that’s Spring – make the most of it!

Our times are not so simple. We are locked in, so don’t go out, don’t stretch your fingers toward others. And with the warm weather starting so soon in the year, beware of summer, advancing in increments, bearing we do not know what fate. In this particular rotation around the sun, we have learned that what we thought was normal is set about with assumptions we had not noticed until they were upended.

Blackwood in bloom

Still, it’s Spring, and I am amazed. The acacia dealbata is already on the wane, but here beside it is a fine-leafed acacia whose name I don’t know about to burst into flower, golden yellow licking up the plant like a new fire in dry kindling. In the Blackwoods, the big buds of flower are out, a restrained yellow you could say except that the whole of the plant is bursting, every branch, from top to bottom, an excitation of flowers. The Blackwood is an unobtrusive tree of modest stature, but it sure knows how to flower.

This morning, I went looking for Ovens Valley wattle I had seen yesterday in Barrm Birrm. Along one of the lateral tracks then up, here, just here, through this band of Prickly Moses, here they are, wending their way from the damp country above the cemetery, spreading steadily along the slope. Cascades of pale yellow, but, my deep apologies living plant, you are not from here. I must bid you adieu with the short sharp pruning saw that sits on my hip.

A small Ovens Valley Wattle

Deceased Ovens Valley Wattle, and check that monster in the distance behind it

 A few months ago, our Landcare group looked at our term deposit and decided there were better things it could be doing than earning almost no interest. We engaged contractors to poison the exotic wattles in Barrm Birrm, and in a sweep from the northern end, they made it almost to the cemetery. I’m out mopping up the stragglers.

After that, we will hold that line, year by year, each not so simple Spring, walking gently through the bush, eyes alert for the flare of yellow that shows the young seedlings, ready to discourage them …. with a firm tug that bares the roots.  

Easy to pull out when they are small

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

 

Signing up for another decade

21 August, 2021

I’ve just clocked my 69th birthday, and it’s got me thinking about what’s changing as I get older. I can do all the outside work I always have done, but I work more slowly. I walk down hillsides carefully. I take more breaks.

I pay more attention to what I’m doing. 

I’m out preparing the vegetable patch for spring planting, and I pace myself. The early afternoon sunshine hits the side of my face. The valley is full of birdsong, the wind is just the particular way it is today, lifting gently along the valley.

I think I’ve got more persistence as I get older. In Landcare meetings, the grey heads sometimes look at each other and lament: ‘Where are the young people? Who is going to carry on this work?’ Well, a few have shown up, but being old doesn’t worry me, because persistence outweighs the physical limitations of aging.

Looking after a patch of land takes a long time. It’s a matter of decades, not months. What matters is getting organised to keep at it. What matters is making the effort itself, not just the result. When I was younger, I didn’t think in terms of decades. I rushed at things, wanting a quick result. The land works to a long timeframe, and I feel mine stretching out as I get older.

I understand as well a little more of the way the world works. The reason a place like Barrm Birrm either slowly degrades or slowly recovers is partly a matter of what we do in Riddells Creek Landcare, but it’s also up to the walkers from town, and the trail bike rides, and the Shire. That gorgeous hillside of grasses and trees lies at the edge of a growing town and a growing city. More people use the place, but maybe attitudes are changing towards care for land. It all affects this place. What we do fits in alongside those other influences.

The recent IPCC report shocked me, as it was designed to do. I have committed to clearing the newly sprouting gorse in a gully in Barrm Birrm near my house. I spend an hour there every couple of days. It’s out of the wind in the gully, and sweet to be amongst the grasses and bursaria and fallen timber. This is not something that will stop the ravages coming, but the gully appreciates it.

I have to dig deep to get the roots out—there, got another one. It’s slow work, but I’m going to get this gully clear of gorse sometime in the next couple of years. There will be more after that, but I reckon I’m good for another decade.

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

What's good for the world

16 July 2021

The young stag is looking hard at me from the cover of the Victorian Landcare magazine.  I got half way through, and put it aside, in despair. Do you know the South African weed orchid, which landed in WA, spread to SA, and appeared near Bacchus March in 1991? It’s a small plant that looks a bit like a native orchid. Each plant releases 2.5 million seeds a year (!!), which can be blown kilometres or spread easily by machinery, vehicles and on footwear.

Add this to panic veldt grass, gorse, serrated tussock, blackberry, wheel cactus, tree dahlia, pittosporum, and to foxes, cats, deer ….. What are we doing? 

Sweet Pittosporum getting ready to meet its maker

My heavy heart wasn’t helped by Tim Flannery, the Science Show RN with ‘Solutions here now for the climate disaster’.  Despite the upbeat title, the future is terrifying. Next on the same show came an update on the fire season in North America. Terrifying. As we swing toward summer, I no longer imagine balmy heat, but the radio tuned to bushfires, and the smell of smoke.

At Riddell, we are cool and damp and a long way from the rising ocean, and have catastrophe-free time to keep weaning our politicians off coal and gas, shifting to renewables, and building strong connections locally, so that when the crises do come, we will have a web of friendship and support.  The deepest personal challenge is our own assumptions. Wendell Berry said it plainly enough:

“We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.” 

A very good way to get know that world is to weed it. Get to know the weed trees in Barrm Birrm—Sallow Wattle, Cootamundra Wattle, Ovens Valley Wattle, Sweet Pittosporum, plus a happy little opportunist called Bluebell Creeper. All beautiful plants, that have migrated from the gardens of residential Riddells Creek. They shade out and destroy the grasses and mosses that run under the open forest on these slopes. So out, out, out they go! With the big ones gone, we can pull the seedlings by hand, as we stroll.

Join RCL members 5, 12, 19 September, 10-12, at 288 Gap Road to walk through the flowering natives of Barrm Birrm and do some recreational weeding. Or join Greening of Riddell first Saturday of the month, 9.30, at the car park beside Wybejong Park.

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