Saturday June 21st Fire Operations Plan sites inspection
The exact time of the winter solstice this year was 9:59am on June 21. One minute before the planned meeting time at the corner of Roses Gap Rd and Pohlners Rd., in the Northern Grampians. Here we were to meet with Graham Parkes and Glenn Rudolph to get an insight into the effectiveness of the planning and execution of the Fuel Reduction burns for the 2008 Autumn season. Most of us were there to observe the solstice pass with no effect, however, Kathy’s guidance system was severely disrupted and had to be over-ridden before she was able to finally home in on the rendezvous.
Graham outlined the difficulties of planning the burns, the effect of the fickle weather at that time of year, and was able to show the meticulous observations and record keeping that is necessary not only for the planning but also for the post burn assessment.
The Roses Gap Road burn was adjacent to a fire that was deliberately lit in the previous year. Although the planned burn was late in the season and plagued by cool and damp weather the two blocks now form an area of much reduced fuel load.
We travelled from this site along Pohlners Road to the burn adjacent to Mt Stapylton. The casual traveller may have considered this to be a very hot burn with the loss of a number of old trees. However a short walk into the burnt area demonstrated how a natural mosaic of burnt and un-burnt areas develops. The loss of old trees is regretted as these are important habitat trees. This exemplifies the difficulty of fuel reduction burns in these times of climate change and very low moisture. The point however was made that the destruction in these periods of low humidity would be much greater in the summer with a wild fire. The difficulty in management for fire with climate change was very obvious. Similar observations were able to be made with the burn in the Black Range. Here, the community had assumed from the smoke on the day of the burn that the fire had been extremely hot. Again on closer examination there are many areas that the fire had not had great effect particularly on the over-story.
Next stop was in the area of the Telstra tower on Mt Zero Road at the Northern end of the Park. Here again it was evident that to get appreciation of the burn it is necessary to walk into the area to look, and not judge the effectiveness from what can be seen from the driving by on the road. This burn had the sort of mosaic that was hoped for with un-burnt areas in a mosaic of burn temperatures up to very hot.
The final stop before the return to Hall’s Gap was in the area where the Red Gum Lease Track meets the Mt Zero Road.
We all appreciated Graham and Glen’s openness and frankness as well as their ability to answer the curly questions and patiently answer the questions regarding the obvious.
Wednesday 25th June TSG Long Clubmoss search on the Victoria Range
It was just a small group who accompanied Sylvia and new Brambuk employee Shu on a trip to the Fortress to search again for this elusive plant. Back in 2005 we had found several clumps at the base of the Fortress, but two more excursions to similar habitats had yielded no results. So Sylvia had decided to return to the original site to look whether the plants were located on the more westerly side as well.
We checked on the seedlings of the rare Daviesia laevis not far from Strahans, then had an adventurous drive up the old fireline (permanently closed to the public), with magnificent views of the Chimney Pots, and past some very early flowering Grampians Bauera, had a very cold lunch stop, then headed up the hill. We found several of the original colony, but no new ones where we searched. However we did find some very healthy specimens of Grampians Ziera, another of our very rare plants. Then on our more civilised descent down the range we paused to admire the tall rough tree ferns. A very satisfying day.
Annual Fungi Frolic – Delley’s Dell
On Sat. July 17, a group of eleven ventured into the bush for FOGG(s) much enjoyed fungi frolic. This year we missed the expertise of a few of our members, however we managed to find up to 20 species. Some wonderful descriptive names were Coral fungi, Raspberry jelly fungus, Yellow jelly bells, Earth star, Pretty Grisette – these fungi of course have proper species names, but the above add a magical quality to these precious forms – although there could be one exception perhaps – Cramp balls, which appeared in black & cocoa coloured clumps on the base of a large gum. We did wonder how this variety got its name!
The rain which fell the week leading up to our foray and the damp conditions in the bush, offered a range of fungi to look at and we only had to go a short way in off the road to find a number of species.
For those interested in formal identification some species named were – Cortina, Stereum complicatuum, Cortinarius, Mycena, Dermocybe.
There were some keen photographers amongst our group so the most interesting of our finds can be viewed on the FOGG website www.foggs-online.org