Category: Miscellaneous Snippet

GWANGEL MORRON – season of honeybees
Mid March to early June

IN THIS ISSUE
NEWS FLASH
President’s Report
From the Park Desk
Welcome Ryan Duffy
Flood Updates
Fogg Meeting Reports
Political Correspondence
Activity Reports
Brush-tailed Rock Wallabies Update
Advisory Group report
Various Snippets
Natural Values News reports
Beyond the Smoke Books
Website News
Poetry Corner
Email address request
Activity Calendar … Read the rest

Our web page continues to attract attention from time to time. Recently there was an email from a French veterinary student wanting some experience with our native animals.

And we have received drawings of our wildlife from a young artist from the USA who is a regular visitor. Her email and support is typical of our enquiries from the website. The artwork she has donated to FOGGs is featured on our “home page”:http://www.foggs-online.org/. We are very grateful Cynthia and look forward to more in the future.

bq.. Message: Dear Friends of Grampians Gariwend,

I’m a graduate student in the Science Illustration program at California State University and am writing to ask if I might be useful as an illustration volunteer/intern for any of your projects. Samples of my artwork are online here:

==http://picasaweb.google.com/megatherium/ScienceIllustration?fgl=true&pli=1#==

“http://picasaweb.google.com/megatherium/ScienceIllustration?fgl=true&pli=1#”:http://picasaweb.google.com/megatherium/ScienceIllustration?fgl=true&pli=1#

I’ve been lucky enough to travel around a fair bit of Australia, and of … Read the rest

_(Courtesy of Prue Daley)_

h2. Syphon Road Closed – Until early 2011

The Syphon Road in the Victoria Valley has been closed by Parks Victoria after recommendations from DSE to close the bridge at the southern end of the road. The bridge was assessed this week by DSE engineers who have deemed it unsafe and have provided advice to Parks Victoria that the bridge should be closed immediately. Funding has been allocated by DSE and the bridge is scheduled to be replaced in the first few months of 2011. By the way, check with Brambuk or the Halls Gap Tourist information Centre before venturing very far in the next few weeks.

h2. Walking Tracks and Roads

Over the past few weeks there has been considerable damage from the strong winds and rain that we have received in the park. Park staff have repaired damage and have been extremely busy clearing … Read the rest

For our poetry corner this time, I would like to print the poem Stan chose to be read at his funeral. FOGG members’ religious views vary greatly. Some of us are active members of Christian churches, others have little or no belief. But all of us, I hope, can appreciate the love of nature evidenced here.

bq. Oh! the place where I worship is the wide open spaces
Filled by the hand of the Lord
Where the trees of the forest are like pipes of an organ
And the breeze plays an amen chord. ==
==
Oh the stars are the candles and they light up the mountains –
Mountains are altars of God
Oh the place where I worship is the wide open spaces
Where the sun warms the peaceful sod ==
==
There’s a carpet of green, and the sky blue roof above
I’m welcome there alone or … Read the rest

We reported last year how the students at Halls Gap Primary School were seeking to have Mackey’s Peak renamed. Completely renaming it was not possible, but last week a new sign explaining the history of the name was unveiled at the foot of the steps to the Pinnacle. Here is an excerpt from the school newsletter:

bq. Students, parents, friends and community members gathered to celebrate the historical naming of Mackey’s Peak with the name well known to the community – ‘Cherub Peak’. Cherub Peak was named following the death of Agnes Folkes, the three month old daughter of John and Phoebe. Agnes became ill and it was not possible to take her to a doctor as all tracks were flooded. She was buried close to the family home at the base of a mountain. The locals began to refer to the mountain as Cherub Peak. It was later officially … Read the rest

_Geraldine and Geoff Harris_

Our walk to Golton Gorge took us twice as long this morning because we stopped frequently along the way to identify birds and look at flowering plants.

Our bird list included:

bq. Scarlet Robin, Superb Fairy Wren, Tawny-crowned Honeyeater, Crimson Rosella, Dusky Woodswallow, Emu (h), Striated Thornbill, White-throated Treecreeper, White-eared Honeyeater, Grey fantail, Spotted pardalote, Yellow Thornbill, Eastern Spinebill, and Kookaburra. The Tawny- crowned Honeyeaters took us a while to identify despite good views of the long curved bill, white eyebrow and black mask curving down along the white breast but Graham Pizzy’s description of their “beautiful, liquid, metallic phrases” was the clue we were looking for.

The flowering plants we noted were:

bq. Silver Banksia Banksia marginata, Erect Guinea-flower Hibbertia riparia, Bundled Guinea-flower Hibbertia fasciculata ssp prostrata, Twiggy Guinea-flower Hibbertia virgata, Common Correa Correa reflex, Hairy Correa Correa aemula, Dusty Millar Spyridium parviflolium, Brown Stringybark … Read the rest

It was a small group who braved another wild and wet afternoon to hear Brendan Nugent present his research into this rare plant, Daviesia braevis. But we learned so much! Not just about this plant, but on the techniques of measuring fertility, the destructive behaviour of cockatoos and wallabies, the challenges of determining the age of Australian plants ( counting growth rings works far better for European and North American climates than for ours), and the concept of rare across time as distinct from rare geographically.

For more info you can contact Pauline 0437 463 378. … Read the rest

_Wendy Bedggood_

Saturday 10th July turned out to be a wild weather day and with warnings to “not shelter under trees’ this activity was shifted to the Wartook café. Ewen had a large board with lots of photos he had taken of fungi found in the local area, he also had several books, including the Fungimap book to which he contributed photos. Spore patterns can help with identification of fungi and Ewen had prepared some for us to look at. These were fungi which were placed gill side down on newsprint (which was black and white) then left overnight so the spores shed. The colour and pattern of the spores could easily be seen and quite fascinating to observe.

We also talked about lichens which took me back to the 70’s when I had a collection and was studying them as one of my projects. Lichens are formed by a … Read the rest

_David Witham_

‘Enthusiasm’ was the watchword for the day as around 26 members gathered in the mural room for an initial power point presentation by geologist Ross Cayley. The number in the audience was evidence of this, but it was more than matched by the daylong exuberance of our mentor, who is obviously totally absorbed in his subject and more than willing to enlighten the layman about its latest theories and conclusions.

Ross set about destroying the notion, with which many of us were familiar, that the Grampians sandstones had originally been something like 10 km thick, because the present eroded remnants of this huge pile do not evidence the characteristics to be expected from such pressure, and the increasingly benign climate over the last 400 million years could hardly have caused such an amount of erosion. This idea is backed by the results of modern techniques of magnetic and … Read the rest