Protecting the character of Macedon Ranges

In the run up to the last State election, a promise was made to provide better protection for the Macedon Ranges. Just what does that mean and how can such protection be provided?

Wednesday 18th November, the Planning Minister Richard Wynne and local member Mary-Anne Thomas fronted an audience of residents to speak to this. The Minister announced that he will appoint an Expert Panel, to hear community opinions and make recommendations to him, which he promises to act on in this term of government. 

To get the ball rolling, we had community members up the front giving their take on what is needed (from Woodend Primary School, MR Sustainability Group, MR Residents' Association and Landcare Woodend), alongside the Director of Planning and Development, MRSC, who copped criticism for poor communication of planning processes to community members, like the current change to the Riddells Creek Structure Plan, and the review of the provisions for the Rural Living Zone. 

Highlights for me were the pointed questions from the floor (many wise heads with much experience in the room), and the presentation from Christine Pruneau from the Macedon Ranges Residents' Association. Christine laid out 14 recommendations for protecting the character of the Macedon Ranges, based on opinion from the Association's members. Here are those 14 points:

1. Emphasise why protection is needed, and re-align government thinking and decisionmaking with a ‘protection’ culture (by which they mean having protection as the primary focus of planning decisions, rather than facilitation of decelopment)

2. Recognise that Macedon Ranges Shire has its own identity, strengths, constraints and needs, and is different to Melbourne, Sunbury and neighbouring areas.
 
3. Recognise the services a well-protected Macedon Ranges provides to Melbourne’s population: proximity, breathing spaces and recreation places.

4. Recognise that the contrast between our natural environment and Melbourne is what
drives tourism.


5. Provide an enduring legacy of strong legislation and State policy settings that take
Statement of Planning Policy No. 8 forward.

6. Protect the entire Shire as the “surrounds” of the Macedon Ranges.
 
7. Make protection of natural resources, environment, landscapes and rural character THE
priority for all decisions.
 
8. Provide certainty about what can and cannot be done, and how it will be done, in this area, including “must” and “must not” planning controls.
 
9. Regulate and cap population growth. Towns spilling into rural land, urbanisation of rural areas and intensifying rural living signal a failure to understand and protect non-renewable resources.
 
10. Identify our towns as integral to the ‘bigger picture’, stop their suburbanisation and make existing town boundaries permanent.
 
11. Defend water catchments and rural areas with tenement controls and development
restrictions, and by requiring parliamentary approval to reduce subdivision sizes.
 
12. Build on existing rural strengths by promoting nature-based tourism and recreation, local produce, and reduced food miles.
 
13. Recognise the inter-generational benefits and sustainability of protecting natural resources.
 
14. Re-empower this community by making it an equal partner in all decision-making.
 
In their view, the Council is going in a different direction, and it's up to the community with the State Government to set up strong, permanent protection.

The Expert Panel will start hearing from residents in face-to-face meetings in the New Year, so look out for that.

What Pope Francis said

At the opening of the Threatened Species of Riddells Exhibition, I quoted Pope Francis from his recent encyclical Laudato Si.In this, he says why we're destroying the earth, and what we need to do. Here is the piece I read:

" ...a sober look at our world shows that the degree of human intervention, often in the service of business interests and consumerism, is actually making our earth less rich and beautiful, ever more limited and grey, even as technological advances and consumer goods continue to abound limitlessly. We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves.

"Each year sees the disappearance of thousands of plant and animal species which we will never know, which our children will never see, because they have been lost forever. The great majority become extinct for reasons related to human activity. Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to us. We have no such right."

There's a lot more besides - find it online.

Ross Colliver, President, Riddells Creek Landcare 

Exhibition of Threatened Species of Riddells Creek

We officially opened Riddells Creek Landcare's exhibition of Threatened Species Sunday 1st October, at Seasons Bistro. These fourteen species are part of the ecological communities of Riddells Creek and all are threatened. The principal threats are continued clearing of native vegetation for agriculture and urban settlement, the spread of weeds and pest animals like foxes and cats, and for grasslands species, the lack of regular burning.

All these species are all listed on the Advisory List of Rare or Threatened Species in Victoria, 2005. The Purple Diuris Orchid (Diuris punctata var punctata) is listed as threatened under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988, the Victorian legislation for the conservation of threatened species and communities. Matted Flax Lily (Dianella ameona) is listed as threatened under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act), the Australian Government's key piece of environmental legislation.

The idea for an exhibition came for the RCL Committee of Manageement, as part of our Rail Reserve project.The Reserves along the railway lines across Victoria are an important refuge for native vegetation. In the approaches to Riddells Creek Station, the remnants of the original grasslands are home to four plants on the Rare or Threatened Species List: Purple Diuris Orchid; Matted Flax Lilly; Large-flower Crane’s-bill (Geranium sp. 1); and Branching Groundsel (Senecio cunninghamii var. cunninghamii).

Riddells Creek Landcare is organising removal of weeds that threaten these species. These are weeds that you'll see in many places - blackberry, english broom, gorse, spear thistle, serrated tussock, briar rose, pine seedlings, fennel, mirror bush, cotoneaster, prunis and phalaris. In the Rail Reserve these weeds are crowding out native species, and need to be controlled.

With funding through a Community Grant from the Port Philip and Westernport Catchment Management Authority, we are able to employ a contractor (Indigwedo) to spray these weeds. The endangered species have all been mapped, and the contractor knows how to remove the weeds without damaging native vegetation.

Thanks to NatureShare.org.au, we had access to high resolution photographs of all 14 species, and Lyn Hovey has had these printed to canvas, mounted and then hung them at Seasons Bistro. Take the opportunity to drop in and see these delights, and take one home for what it cost us to make them up.

RCL Members and guests at the opening of the Threatened Species Exhibition

Let's create ways to cooperate in environmental action

When the first consultations took place a month ago for the new MRSC Environmental Strategy, RCL sent a comment to the MRSC Officer managing the Strategy development, as follows:

Our members are cautious about MRSC’s invitation to contribute their ideas to another Environmental Strategy. They see the potential, but they want this to be different form last time, when good ideas weren’t acted on, and the Council did not build a partnership with the community around its knowledge, its preferences or what it is already doing.

Community members quite likely contribute in monetary value, considerably more than MRSC does or ever could invest. That’s the nature of the situation – landholders’ investment capacity combined is enormous. Macedon Ranges is a peri-urban community, with remnant and new squattocracy. People have capital to spend on the place they love. Why not engage that interest and partner with that capacity?

What is beyond belief is that MRSC has a history of making its contribution without working with those community environmental groups that have their shoulder to the wheel month by month, year by year, on the things that Council can’t so easily do.

We want a partnership, where the Shire brings and integrates into the work of community groups its own necessary contribution. We want leadership as well, in articulating direction, and the current round of consultation is a way to draw in the community’s direction. But we have been here before, not just with MRSC, but with other strategies, of which there are dozens in the environmental space, all begging for community input (aka My Free Time).

Plenty of talk and a good measure of receptivity up front in forming the Strategy, and when it gets to implementation, zip!

We ask that in the strategy development period, Council staff and members of community environment groups in the Shire work out together to develop a process by which the principles and high order goals of the Strategy will be implemented, so that decisions in different localities, across public and private ownership, use the best of what community and Council can do. We passed a motion at RCL CoM:

“we demand that the environment strategy develop a specific implementation strategy for the involvement of community environmental groups in setting specific priorities for each ward and for allocation of the council’s environment budget.”

We are ready to work with Council on the design of that Implementation Strategy.

By raising the matter of the budget and its allocation, we mean to say that we are interested in the process right to the point where expenditure decisions are made. Granted, those decisions will be made by authorised positions – Council, CEO, line manager. However, there’s plenty of room, we believe, to take account of the opinions of those acting on the responsibilities that come with care for land.

Here's an update as of 25/09/15:

RCL President Ross Colliver spoke with Silvana Predebon, MRSC Enviro Strategy, this Thursday about pathways towards improved collaboration betweeen community environment groups and Council. Silvan thought that sharing decisions making on budget allocation was unlikely to be supported by Council, and that they had in mind points of engagement futher down the participation spectrum, like "Information" and "Consultation."  We came up with a “low cost/high yield” start to Council working better with the community that goes like this: 

What? information sharing session between all those with an interest in each of the Strategy’s three areas of concern – Climate change, Biodiversity and Catchment Management. 

Why? There’s a lot happening that community groups don’t know about. Let’s start with a time to find out about that, and work out where there are opportunities for collaborate better. 

How? Convene a gathering of community groups and agencies with an interest in a theme. People break into discussion groups around specific issues where they see potential for collaboration. Each small group reviews action underway and picks where there’s opportunity for collaboration, between community groups, with Council, or with other agencies. Short report back, and those with an interest proceed with that collaboration as they choose.

Look for that idea in the draft Strategy when it comes out, and say what you think about it.

Special talk at Riddells Creek Landcare's AGM, Saturday, 15 August: AGM 2:00; Talk 3:30: How did Aboriginal Australians manage their knowledge of plants and animals critical to their survival? What does this tell us about ancient monuments like Stonehenge?

Bill Hall's Introduction to Lynne Kelly's

Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies

 

On July 3 at La Trobe University, Castlemaine local naturalist and author Lynne Kelly launched her new book, Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies. 


In her talk Lynne will explain how her research and discussions with Aboriginal Australians about how they maintained their detailed knowledge of the detailed natural histories of a wide variety of animals and plants gave her the insight to see how Stonehenge functioned that is different from any of the many ideas that have been put forward to now. Lynne is a great story teller, and I am sure her talk will be entertaining as well as important.

Personally, I am convinced that Lynne Kelly's work will revolutionize our understandings of ancient monuments like Stonehenge and how our prehistoric ancestors made the transition from hunting and gathering to managing agrarian city-states.

 
Dr Kelly is a science writer who started her career as a school teacher with a background in engineering, physics, mathematics, information technology and gifted education. This made her a very good story teller. She then went on to write 10 books for education before turning her hand to popular science titles. Lynne is also a skeptic who became an amateur magician and memory specialist to better debunk mystical and paranormal clap-trap. Her first popular science book, The Skeptics Guide to the Paranormal (Allen & Unwin - click book pictures for more information about each book from Lynne's web site) explains how the magician's tricks and feats of memory work.

 

For her next two books, also with Allen & Unwin, Crocodile: evolution's greatest survivor - looking at 23 species of crocodiles around the world but focusing on the two Australian species, and Spiders: learning to love them - an award winning look at their natural history, Lynne researched the surprisingly detailed and accurate natural history knowledge recorded in the Aboriginal dreaming.

     

On a holiday in England Lynne's husband, Damian, a prominent local birder, archaeologist and IT specialist decided they would have to visit Stonehenge. Lynne tells me she was initially reluctant to go with him because she was so put off by all the nutty and mystical explanations put forward to explain why the monument was actually constructed. Trying to answer why people with no more sophisticated tools than stones, bones and antlers would expend the huge amount of effort required to dig huge ditches and drag stones weighing many, many tons from than 100 km distant, certainly provided an opportunity for fanciful explanations.

Lynne and Damian at Stonehenge

However, Lynne's skepticism, dabbling in magic and mnemonics, and understanding of how Aboriginal Australians used tracks through the landscape to manage their detailed and extensive knowledge of natural history, geography, bush medicine, astronomy, etc. - all without writing - prepared her to see in a totally new light why people would want to build something like Stonehenge. She brought her idea back to Australia, and completed her PhD at La Trobe University in 2013 researching and testing her explanation against observations how pre-literate (primary oral) people around the world managed and transmitted large bodies of knowledge that could only be held in living memories.

In her talk, Lynne will explain how ancient monuments such as Stonehenge act as mnemonic devices in formal knowledge management systems. Systems like Stonehenge helped prehistoric cultures accumulate and transmit the great increases in new knowledge they required to make the transition from hunting and gathering to specialized trades and roles in settled agricultural communities and city-states.


From my own point of view, it took Lynne about 10 minutes to convince me that she had made a great and revolutionary discovery. I have been working for some time on my own book charting the evolution of tools and humans' capacity to manage knowledge from when our ancestors began hunting and gathering on the African savannas up to now. The only transition I could not easily explain was how hunters and gatherers could accumulate enough practical knowledge to take up agriculture and build towns and small cities without any concept of writing.

Lynne's idea that circular monuments allowed people moving from a mobile existence across broad landscapes where they indexed their mnemonic songs to conspicuous sites, to a sedentary existence in much smaller areas. The circles with their stones and pillars also provided memorable locations that could be used to index stories containing essential survival knowledge.

The entirely practical explanation of Stonehenge's functions makes sense of a lot of puzzling observations in prehistoric anthropology and archaeology, and from my own investigations, also coordinates very well with how memory is organized in the human brain.

Understanding how Stonehenge was used by pre-literate cultures to organize and index important survival knowledge also emphasizes in ways European Australians could not otherwise understand just how important their association with "country" was to our Original Australians. Their Country provided the loci for indexing their memories of natural history, technology and culture in song-lines.

Oh Deer

Snapped by Gill Best, on the north bank of Sandy Creek, late July 2015.

Places We Love - Invitation to a Conversation

Are you concerned that the natural places you love are vulnerable?
Do you want to see more assured protection in law and in the policies of government, including local government?

The Places We Love alliance has invited people to step forward, and start talking to each other about a) what they care about in the places they love, and why, and b) what would better protect those places.

The alliance is made up of 42 state and national environmental groups. I heard about it through Michael Pulsford at Australian Conservation Foundation, who is supporting conversations in the marginal Federal electorates of McEwen (yep, that's Riddells) and Deakin (over the east side of Melbourne).

The change strategy is to connect numbers in communities with advocacy at national level for stronger laws protecting natural places. The alliance formed when the Commonwealth started talking about giving back decisions under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 2000 to the States. The EPBC has often been the only thing between developers and a lot of Australia's wild or definitely-wilder-than-urban places.

The alliance has developed an agenda for the conversation, which I learned by being part of a conversation Michael Pulsford ran a few weeks ago. Here's a photo of Michael (on the right, and that's Helen from the Daly Reserve group in the middle, and Chris who's a member of 350.org and lives in Diggers Rest).

Speaking personally, I want a way to influence policy, so I'm up for hosting some conversations. The simplest next step after the conversation is staying tuned to what the alliance does at national and State level, and they're offering to keep us informed.

The agenda is simple, but rich: first the Heart (What places do you care about? Why?), then the Head (what enviro issues do you care most strongly about?), and we close with the Hands (what needs doing on those issues?).

As the host, I document our views, and that goes into the Places We Love synthesis of views at the local level.

We need 2 hours for the conversation, and I'm suggesting my place at 288 Gap Road (the house beside the winery), 7-9 this Thursday evening 16th July. My living area has room for 6 people round the fire, plus me, so email or phone to say yes if you want to be in it. 

If you can't do that time, but want the conversation, call or write and we'll find an additional time.

Warm regards
Ross Colliver, 0411 226519  ross.colliver@bigpond.com