The cars and chasms of Barrm Birrm

What to write next about Barrm Birrm, I asked myself. 

I decided to talk with Lydia and Ellena Best, my neighbours up the road, and arranged to drop in one Sunday afternoon.

Ellena Best on the left, Lydia Best on the right

They've walked a lot in Barrm Birrm - what did they like in there? Ellena said she liked looking out for animals. Did she have a particular part of Barrm Birrm that she liked? "Where all the crashed cars are," she said. What would she say to someone to get them interested in going to Barrm Birrm? 

"I would say, if you're really interested in wild animals, if you go there often, you might see some. And if you like insects and butterflies and stuff like that, they might be there."

"I think it's authentic, untouched, sort of, the way you'd expect bush to be," said Lydia. Her favourite places: the dam, and the place where the dirt has eroded and there's gaps you can walk through.

It was a fine afternoon. As we set off for BB, I didn't knowing quite what we would do and how interesting it would be for the girls. It was late autumn and not much was out. The land had that empty, dried-out, waiting-for-rain feeling.

I need not have worried. Lydia and Ellena's version of Barrm Birrm was pure thrill seeking, and I had to just hang on for the ride.

At first I was shocked and a little apprehensive. Then memory helped me out, memory of the back of North Balwyn, circa early 1960s, where the houses bled out to orchards, memory of the muddy and dangerous fun that was had at the boundary between suburbia and raw fields.


Fifty years later, I'm trying to be the responsible adult, "keeping an eye on things", but in truth, the girls are setting the pace. I'm back with damp smells and danger, making my way through a world larger than me.

We did indeed see a wallaby loping off at one point, but the afternoon was mostly about cars and gullies, and the afternoon light falling through the trees. Lydia, who has travelled through Barrm Birrm since she was a babe in arms, has the final word: 

"Just come and try it, and if you don't like it, that's fine, but I think you will."

Weeds of Barrm Birrm

Yes, it looks really good, but that robust, green, brilliantly coloured flowering thing will grow anywhere, and when it's not what's intended to be there, we call it a weed.  For Barrm Birrm, the bush on the hills behind Riddells Creek, a weed is anything that wasn’t here a couple of hundred years ago.

It's our responsibility, as people who care for this land, to knock these little critters on the head, so that they don't take over. Here' a short list of the weeds of Barrm Birrm.

Gorse. Ah, the hallowed heath, let us remember Britain, and Scotland, and the grouse amongst the gorse, and let us take our secateurs and snip and paint. We've very little gorse in BB, having spent $1400 of our money on a big patch last year, which is now looking very sick, but there's a bit of tidying up to do, and gorse manages to regrow from the seed bank for about 50 years, so it's a task for those with a long timeframe.

Blackberry. Of course, blackberry, but we're doing well with blackberry, and better than a lot of places around Riddells. We sprayed out a few areas at the same time as we had the gorse done. But for the patient, cut and paint is required at just about every point where the cross-slope tracks cross gullies, because that's where it stays damp.

Cootamundra Wattle appears on the middle slopes. It looks great in flower, covered with bright yellow, but boy does it get around – go to http://vro.depi.vic.gov.au/dpi/vro/vrosite.nsf/pages/pot_dist_cootamundra_wattle and have a look at potential for infestation across Victoria.

Sallow Wattle is another good looker that doesn't know when to say at home. A chainsaw will set it back, and workout each spring is bringing results on the lower slopes.

Sweet pittosporum is a native down in the Otways, where it loves the high rainfall, but here it just looks out of place. We've got it on the lower slopes just in from Gap Road. Handsaw and paint with RoundUp works well, chainsaw for the bigger specimens. This has now become a priority, as they're expanding their range, spread by birds eating seed.

You can buy Bluebell Creeper at the nursery, but when it jumps the fence, watch out! MRSC kindly gave RCL $1,800 last year to get the contractors in to knock off an outbreak at the North East corner of Barrm Birrm, on Gap Road. It coughed and spluttered and half of it died, but the other half threw off a pretty potent brew and kept rolling.

Our contractor, Indigwedo, did the right thing and came back and cut and painted, time consuming but effective. When they were done, having got familiar with the plant, I started finding other single plants a bit further back along Gap Road, and into a gully, so it's now on the hit list. 

Here it is looking lovely and green, but it's on its way out, because I've just cut and painted this specimen with Round Up.

I won't mention Panic Veldt Grass, because what do you do once it's in? However, it doesn't seem to creep forever, with the native grasses holding ground eventually, 10 or 20 metres in from Gap Road. "Edge effect" they call it, which is why keeping big continuous pieces of native bush is important.

There are few more culprits, but I'll finish with Agapanthas. I don't just get the "avenue of aggies" look, up the country driveways. If you must, plant the seedless variety, because the seeds are eaten and carried by birds far afield, and the plant is almost indestructible once it gets well-established.

You could walk past it and not worry, but seeing something like this nags at me. One day I'll bring my mattock on my walk and grub this one out.

Well, that's quite enough. Phone me up to go on our mailing list for weeding events, when you can come along and meet other people who know that doing the impossible just takes a bit of persistence.

Ross Colliver, 0411 226519, Riddells Creek Landcare

Tracks of Barrm Birrm

Barrm Birrm, the place of many yam roots, lies 2.4 kilometres up Gap Road from Riddells Creek Main Road, and it is a lovely place for that simple pass-time of walking in the bush. You'll have the place to yourself. The dog walkers sometimes carry on Gap Road into Barrm Birrm, and do a stretch up the hill to its steep part then down again, but they don't seem to venture sideways along the slopes.  In 4 years of walking semi-regularly, I have come upon other walkers perhaps 4 times, and one of those was the Field Naturalists from Keilor Plains, chattering away and stopping intermittently to murmur over plants. 

It's strange that more people from Riddells don't venture out, for one of the lovely things about Barrm Birrm is its choice of tracks. It has them running every which way, to suit you style of walking. The roads put in for the failed development of the 1970s have now descended into muddy traps in the gullies, with new tracks made around the deep pools for the less adventurous, a reminder of the human folly that spawned the creation of this estate. 

These same roads nevertheless form a firm boulevard on higher ground, as they head up and along the ridges, very suitable for talking and walking with guests after a boozy lunch, or in the twilight before dinner. 

Running laterally across the slopes, the main road also provide access to the many other tracks that give off into the bush.  There are tracks running straight up and down the slope, connecting to the other laterals, and narrow tracks made by motor bike riders seeking more difficult passage.

The fragile alliance of plant life and topsoil broken, these tracks are slowly but inevitably eroding, each season washing more clay away and exposing the broken river aggregate from which this part of the Macedon is made. In Conglomerate gully, those stones are fused together, but here they have no binding, and the eroding tracks make for stony and difficult walking.

Wandering less directly across the slopes are the tracks made by the people with horses, who sought out an alternative to the stony tracks, and took their horses through untouched bush. Since the horse people sold up, these tracks are happily stabilising, the grasses returning slowly, but they provide a soft track underfoot, and make for a slow movement through the bush.

Then there are the animal tracks, that give themselves up only when you've spent a bit of time in the bush, and become comfortable there. I took me good while walking here to see this lacework of movement, made by the permanent residents of Barrm Birrm, the wallabies and Eastern Grey Kangaroo. Their tracks traverse the slopes in gentle lines, undeterred by fallen timber and low hanging branches. Stepping over and through these obstacles, they make for the most intimate journey.

 

Walking any other track, you'll come across these soft-footed pathways, giving off to one side, and when you look, yes there it is on the other side, coming through and crossing right here. Now there's an invitation, to leave the main path and follow the wallaby, the living presence of the bush quiet around you, available. 

Check out Riddells Landcare's blog http://nutsaboutnaturercl.blogspot.com.au/ for photos of the tracks of Barrm Birrm. 

Join us for an “every now and then” working bee, where we do fun things like cut up trees that have fallen on track, to avoid impatient motorcyclists and 4WDers driving around the timber and making more tracks. Or poisoning sweet potostrum. Give me call to put yourself on our mailing list.

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare, 0411226519

That's what Landcare's all about!

The quantity of the haul was impressive. 

From beer bottles to beer caps, useless scooters to the cast-offs of fast food retailers, and cans, and more stubbies, and cigarette packets, and bits of cars. Best of the early catches - a TV .... and a big shout out to the boy putting bottles in the broken TV screen as we dropped it off at the collection point, who announced - "I'm looking at rubbish!". Very astute.

I'd ear-marked a couple of beds that needed picking up, and had asked if any parent in the Scouts had a trailer. Joe showed up at the wheel of a suitable piece of gear. Jo, George Wright, and a Scout I assumed was her son, hauled out not just beds, but couches, and old dumped rubble, and a depressingly new pile of builders' rubbish, from the far side of the cemetry.

Thank you all for your wonderful work, Cubs, Scouts and parents, and Landcare members. I appreciated the way everyone went their own way and took responsiblity for the overall task - to clean down the 100 or so hectares on this side of the ridge line. 

5 mins after I finished my briefing, Barrm Birrm had half a dozen small groups of kids+adult(s) scouring its roads, and a couple of fast response teams of Dads with their sons, who went off to places that I wouldn't have thought of, but which really needed attention.  Everyone was able to lend a hand in their own way.

Here's a photo of the crew as we gather at the end of 2 hours cleaning up Barrm Birrm. There was a buzz in the air from that sense of accomplishment people get from looking after the place where they live. 

That's what Clean Up Australia Day is about, and it's what Landcare is all about too.

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare

Demolishing watsonia at Barrm Birrm working bee

Russell Best had spotted two patches of watsonia, with the leaves dying back to disappear till next year, so we called a working bee Saturday in mid-January. Gill, Lydia and Ellena Best, George Wright, Lynley McGlashan, Ross Colliver and Alice Cummins turned up to join the hunt.

Watsonia is an import from South Africa that arrived in the middle of the 19th Century, was cultivated for its blooms, and of course ran away. It has bulbs that multiply each year at the side of the main bulb.

 Fortunately, it was easy enough getting a mattock down below the bulb to lever it out.

We found and dealt with the first patch in good time, but I couldn't find the second. I searched down the drainage line the watsonia had settled in and found a few scattered specimens, but not that other patch.

After working on the sweet Pittosporum in the immediate vicinity, and an outbreak of thistles, I was heading for home thinking we had finished, when I found the second patch. This proved harder to get at, because the plant was growing through fallen timber, but we think we got them all.

Thanks to Gill, Lydia and Ellena Best, George Wright, Lynley McGlashan and Alice Cummins for your excellent digging and sawing.

Ross Colliver

The time of the lilies

Late Spring into early Summer is the time of the lilies. As the warmth hangs around the lower slopes of Barrm Birrm, spires and drifts of flowers open to reveal a marvellous inventiveness. So many tricks of the eye and scents, to tease and entice, all in pursuit of pollination! 

The Tall Fringe-Lily wears a cute fringe on its three bright pink petals. The pretty Milkmaids stand in clusters, bright white petals offsetting their pink ovary, murmuring 'come hither.' And the Chocolate Lily sends out long stems decked with many bright purple flowers that waft, yes, a delicious chocolate scent on the morning air. 

Tall Fringe-Lily. Russell Best

Chocolate lilies, with Milk maids. Nadya Korinfsky

Chocolate lilies. David Francis

A good place to start your lily searching is up a track 130 meters along the dirt road part of Gap Road, from the T Junction at the top of Gap Road. Park on the right hand verge where there's space, and head up the lower slopes. Soon you're in swaths of chocolate lilies. 

Lily browsing is a gentle pastime. It requires a slow pace, a willingness to look and wait for the flowers to make themselves known, and an appreciation of small things. These aren't lilies as you find them at the florist, blaring their presence. They are small, delicate constructions, living their lives out quietly amongst grasses. 

Once you make a start, wandering for lilies takes a hold. You may find yourself off the track, picking your way through grasses, scanning ahead for more wonders. Let your curiosity lead you. There are so many tracks in Barrm Birrm, you're sure to find another soon, and heading down the slope anytime is your fallback, bringing you out onto Gap Road. Go deeper into the bush and you may start to find Barrm Birrm's spectacular orchids. 

To learn more about these plants, get a copy of "Macedon Range Flora" from the good folk at Riddells Post Office.