We’re in sight of the airport when the big white bus turns left
through a tight entrance gate, along a looping road then down, down, to drop us
200 metres from our destination. Deep Creek. We’re at a bend where the creek
has carved its way through larva to leave cliffs of polished rock.
It feels like we’re actually inside the lava flow. Here at
the bottom there are stands of red gum and sweet bursaria, and pools of
standing water, fresh not stagnant, so water must be moving. Early winter and
the rains not yet come, but the creek is fed by water seeping out from the rock
all along its length.
Deep Creek starts on the north side of the Macedon Range, in
the dip between the Central Macedon massif and the granites of the Cobaw Range.
It winds its way east, east to the north of Lancefield, then south through the volcanic
plain, in serpentine loops, slowly, taking its time. You can’t see it from the
Lancefield Road, which travels on the flat high country, but drive a couple of
kilometres east and the road will suddenly drop into the valley. Down here are
remnants of the ecosystems that got established as the creek worked its way
down through the lava flow. Damaged by grazing, where the sheep and cattle have
been kept out, those ecosystems are recovering.
We’re here to see what the owner has done to bring back the
vegetation along the creek. Dean Platt, a freelance ecologist working on
contract to Melbourne Water’s Stream Frontage Program, has set up a day visiting
five sites along Deep Creek. He has called the trip ‘The Red Gum Valleys of the
Maribyrnong’. Manna gum likes the wetter valleys of the Macedon Range, but in
the steep-sided valleys of Deep Creek and its tributaries, it’s the red gum
that thrives. You’ll see it too out on the plain, coping with a more exposed
position, and Dean thinks that as the climate dries, the red gum will move
slowly north up the valleys.
Modern times,
human time, creek time, geological time: here they intersect and get tangled
up. In the sands to the side of the creek I find the shell of a large
freshwater mussel. How long since the creek grew mussels this big, big enough
for a good feed? The Wurundjeri are still around, but they’re not eating
mussels out of Deep Creek any more.
In a thousand years, who will be living around here? Another
plane lumbers its way into the sky, headed for Singapore or Dubai.
Looking back up the slope of the hill we’ve come down, the
serrated tussock gleams metallic in the afternoon light. It looks like it grew
up here, but it’s a weed that has displaced the native grasses, colonising
country cleared for sheep. Lines of shrubs and trees have been planted into the
contour, in hopes of a slow shading out of the tussock, and indeed under the
remnant gums, the native ground cover hangs on. Another plane takes off.
We’re all people who are looking after our own bit of creek.
This is a chance to see what others are doing, to feel encouraged by their
progress, and to understand more about what works and what doesn’t. With us for
the day are the small band of agency staff who know this country well and who
look after it as much as funding and the voracious demands of a growing city
will allow.
As we move from site to site, the bus is a hum of
conversation. We live scattered through this country, so this is a rare
opportunity to meet others, to learn from them and to share aloud the
frustrations and pleasures of caring for the land.
We’re either stupid or brave to be thinking about protecting
the natural systems of these valleys, but when I walk along the creek bottom,
with the red gums dense and the bursaria shedding seed, it feels like a good
thing to do, and despite the imponderables of a drying climate, the right thing
to do.
Ross Colliver, Riddells
Creek Landcare
