Riddell Main Drain has a new name

July 2020

The Office of Geographic Names recently gazetted the name ‘Murnong Creek’ to replace the name ‘Riddells Creek Main Drain’. Yes, this is the creek that runs right through the middle of town. Murnong is the Woiwurrung name for Yam Daisy, a name selected by the Wurundjeri Land & Compensation Cultural Heritage Council Aboriginal Corporation, in consultation with Melbourne Water.

It is a fitting name, because this creek begins in Barrm Birrm – place of many yam daisies - at the top of Gap Road. From there, it flows through the recently subdivided Turner property, and runs parallel to Bolithos Road, then under that to Main Road right beside the bakery. At this point in its journey, it’s a wide grassed concrete culvert that runs behind the Station Street shops, under Station Street, and makes its way under the railway line to Riddells Creek.

Murnong Creek is not a happy creek. The concreting approach to drainage dominates, but pause a moment at the bridge on Station Street, and in most seasons, from amongst the weeds and rubbish, you will hear the resident frogs.

We need safe drainage through town, but there are more interesting ways to do this! If the humans of Riddell put their hearts, minds and hands to it, Murnong could be a happy creek. It would take imagination and money as well, but imagination is the starting point – just look at the Lions Park Playground!

To see what’s possible, google 'Moonee Ponds Creek Strategic Opportunities Plan', and find your way to pages 25-27. There you’ll find a famous Melbourne creek that lost its soul to a concrete drain, now reimagined as a beautiful place for humans, animals and plants. Imagine our own creek given a rework like that!

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare

The new normal

June 2020

The Prickly Moses is blooming, Acacia verticillate, that very prickly acacia with a lovely spreading habit. I’m out walking more, as many of us have been, tracing the same routes through Barrm Birrm. Perhaps it’s the repetition, the constant revisiting, but I’m starting to notice the slight changes that accumulate as the season shifts.

This band of acacia budded a while ago, and now a few here and there have begun to bloom. The hollows where the plant clusters will eventually be dusted bright yellow, but first, the buds of the future flower swell, crowded on their stems. 

This is a blooming that proceeds over days and weeks, floret by floret, individual plants making up their own minds when to bloom. Here in the dip in the hillside where I walk most days, I pass an elaborate choreography made for just this place. There’s another grove further west along the hillside. And a patch back towards Royal Parade—I must visit to see what’s happening there.

The disruption of business-as-usual has shifted the balance in our lives. The digital has expanded. We reel in products and entertainments. What we command appears in an instant, or next day by special delivery. What other movies has Raoul Peck directed? I can find the answer with a few keystrokes. I am master of the universe. It’s all dazzling and wonderful, but exhausting. Will this genie ever let up?

Walking through the bush, I walk my way into a different tempo, where things are always changing, but very slowly. My mind tumbles along like a gang of exuberant cockatoos, while all around, the plants grow their way into winter with meticulous presence. There is the crinkly edge of lichens at the base of a tree, grays and sage green and black, fat with moisture. The new growth at the tips of the Sweet Bursaria brings a paler green above the old growth. The Chuffs move ahead of me through the trees, calling to each other. A new normal.

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare

Rambling through Covid

May 2020

The first day of the lockdown, I took an early morning walk up Gap Road, in autumn air so pleasant I walked on further than usual. That’s curious, I thought. I can hear the limbs of trees rubbing together. I never noticed that before. 

Then I realised, with a jolt - the human world had stopped.

To save their skins, the humans are taking a break, and all creation breathes a sigh of sweet relief. A gang of parrots squabble and shriek in the distance. The magpies’ late morning warble expresses what I love about this strange interruption to business-as-usual, a kind of spaciousness in the heart.

I feel I’ve slipped back a century.

I’m not the only one walking. The walkers are on the streets, to ease the boredom, stretch the limbs, keep the dog happy, let the kids run themselves out. In Riddell we have two bush walks right on the edge of town. Conglomerate Gully, up Wheelwrights Road, is an hour circuit, reassuringly signed. Or there’s Barrm Birrm at the top of Gap Road, a maze of untended and unregulated tracks.

Street walking is good for waking up, but afternoons are good for rambling, and the bush is the place to do it. In Barrm Birrm, where I mostly walk, you can make up your own mind as you go. Up the hill for a little cardio, or along the hillside for a stroll? Autumn rains have brought new growth to the grasses under the trees. The green cloak of the cassinia fills the air with its pungent scent, sharp, herbaceous. Wattles are setting up for winter blooming, florets branching like outstretched fingers.

Rambling leaves time for thinking about things. The bush sticks to its own rhythms, and there’s pattern and sense all around, that quietens the heart. I take heed of Claire Collie’s advice: "You don't want to be wise now. You want to be watching and being quiet and observing what's going on."

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare

Clean Up time

Clean Up Australia Day Barrm Birrm 2020

 

March 2020

Riddells Creek Landcare held its fourteenth Clean Up Australia Day in Barrm Birrm, first Sunday in March. We had Scouts and Cubs from 1^st Riddells Creek Scouts along, and Gill Williams and her crew got a good haul.

Picking up other people’s rubbish is an exercise in civic responsibility, and an education. What people drop in the bush is astonishing. Stubbies tossed out car windows; energy bar wrappers; prunings from the garden; broken tiles and mortar. Great chunks of concrete.

As you know, Barrm Birrm is that lawless bit of bush at the top of Gap Road. It’s actually private property, a subdivision from the 1970s where people never had permission to build, but hoped that might change. It hasn’t and it won’t. It’s illegal to dump rubbish there, but the owners aren’t around, so if you’re too lazy to put that garden waste in your green bin, or too cheap to take that rubble to the tip and pay, you can go and dump it there.

Preaching about the bad consequences for the bush probably won’t make a difference if you’ve taken the trouble to drive in over bad tracks, maybe with a trailer, to do the drop off. You’ve already got a pretty solid ‘up yours’ attitude. You’re stuffing up a natural ecosystem, a beautiful thing that took a long time to make itself, but hey, what you want comes first, doesn’t it?  

Lecturing won’t make a difference, but what will make a difference is people who do give a damn showing up once a year to clean up the bad behaviour of the selfish. To the good folk who showed up this year – our profound thanks, and see you next year.

And to the other adults in Riddell, put it in your diary – first Sunday in March, 10-12 am, Gap Rd and Royal Parade. Every year.

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare

The Summer Holidays

February 2020

‘Courage is the resolve to do well without the assurance of a happy ending’ 

Dr Kate Marvel, climate scientist.

The first English assignment at the start of each year in my primary school was … you guessed it: ‘The Summer Holidays’. This year, mine begins: Emergency Services app and weather app at the ready, phones and laptops charged, single bag packed, fire clothes sorted, wool blankets and water in the car. 

Texts flowing out to relatives and friends: ‘Are you alright? What’s happening there?’ Messages flowing back: ‘Our house is still standing, but our neighbour’s is gone.’ ‘We’ve lost the studio.’ Watching the news. Listening to the radio. Day after day.

I’m in a state of constant attention, a hybrid of alertness and fear, and in the background, a brooding meditation on the way things are going in the world. Learning to feel with fires, but also to look past the fires to the politics, and through the politics to the ways of thinking, to what we value. I sense that we’re learning to hold the feeling of situations alongside critical inquiry into those situations.

Situation #1: In Cabargo, the Prime Minister shakes the hand of a pregnant woman. She does not accept this; he insists. The video goes viral. Like a football incident replayed, Australians make up their own minds. No, he didn’t pay attention. No listening, no discussion. No connection to her feeling.

Situation #2: Out shopping In Woodend, with the NSW South Coast and East Gippsland burning, the shop assistant asks cheerily: ‘How are you today?’ My partner replies slowly: ‘I don’t know really ….’ The shop assistant drops into her body, and her tone shifts: ‘I know what you mean.’ A pause in the flow of normal business. Feeling shared.

Situation #3: He checks the latest advice, the facts, says there’s no reason to go. She senses the situation, feel s unsafe. They try to hear each other, through the tangle of feeling and facts. This scenario, a thousand times, between the man and the woman.

Untangling the mess we’re in, with no hope of finding heaven. 

Just perhaps an honorable life.

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare