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