Category: Articles

PROJECT PLATYPUS NEWS

This year will celebrate 20 years of operation with a tour of past works and a celebratory dinner to be held in early October.

This years Plantout will involve four community plantings, four schools plantings and one corporate/group plantings. The community plantings will again be held through the months of July, where local and visiting volunteers will be encouraged to come along and lend a hand. The planting activities will again be themed with the aim of involving a wide range of volunteers in this important work. The first to kick off will be a site near Pomonal on Saturday 5th of July, where volunteers will plant 2,500 plants. With assistance from Jallukar Landcare Group in hosting the planting day, backpackers and other visitors to Halls Gap will be encouraged to come along and help, with a minibus running from the YHA.

 

The Grampians to Pyrenees Biolink Project continues … Read the rest

HISTORY: Final installment of NATURE IN THE SERRA RANGE.

By J. W. AUDAS, F.L.S., F.R.M.S., Assistant, National Herbarium, Melbourne.

 

(Read before the Field Naturalist’s Club of Victoria, 15th Jan., 1919.)

 

In our last few issues we have been publishing Audas’s description of a Spring excursion to Halls Gap. We conclude his story as they do the last leg of their 2 day walk. Please note that the botanical names are sometimes hard to decipher. The library who have made this available on the web has used character recognition software to get into a text document and it has not always coped with Latin vocabulary. And of course some plant names have changed as well.

 

Having reached a large, swiftly-flowing creek containing good water, we decided to boil the billy and have lunch, and enjoy a short respite from travelling. Feeling refreshed, we

 

pushed on and negotiated a high ridge, from the top of which a … Read the rest

ROUND TABLE REPORT

 

The agenda items for the roundtable all focused on the January fires. DEPI, CFA, Parks and Local government perspectives were all discussed.

January 15 was the 3rd day of temperatures above 400 C and thunderstorms had been predicted so all available crews and plant were in full readiness to deal with fires from lightening strikes. The thunderstorms started in the late afternoon. Predictions for 16th were for extreme weather conditions and although 10 aircraft and the aircrane were attacking several fires by 10 am in the morning, they were not having a great impact because of the already extreme weather conditions. Two fires in the southern Grampians and one of the northern fires were put out by ground crews but a couple of the northern ones in more remote locations were unable to be put out and it was unsafe to drop crews in to fight … Read the rest

NATURAL VALUES NEWS

Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby

        The Moora Creek colony population has been stable for almost a year (touch wood), the last mortality was in April last year. The population is currently 7 animals. Images are retrieved weekly from a series of remote cameras that have been deployed through the release site. Image attached, female 82 who is our longest surviving wallaby (close to 8 years old!). Individual wallabies can be identified from the colour or pattern of their radio-tracking collar antennae and ear-tag.

 Quoll

      Further remote camera images have been obtained of a spotted-tail quoll. The quoll has now been detected on four separate occasions, all at the Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby colony location. Parks Victoria is attempting to gain a hair-follicle sample from the quoll in order to determine where it has come from. To achieve this rangers have established cage-traps adjacent to the rock-wallaby colony and will trap periodically, will establish hair-tubes within … Read the rest

ADVISORY GROUP REPORT Monday 18th March 2014

 

 

Advisory Group Meeting Minutes

 

Much of our meeting was of course fire related as we came to terms with the intensity of the fire and the damage done. But we first had a few items of business arising from the December meeting.

 

1. Recruitment process for Advisory Group:advertisements will go in local papers very soon, calling for expressions of interest. Procedures for forming a Traditional Owner Reference Group are nearing completion.

 

2. Camping:Asbestos at Staplyton campground is being cleaned up this week. Staplyton will be included in the Online booking system being rolled out. However Staplyton campground doesn’t easily align with the Grampians Peak Trail. A second campground in the Northern part of the Park would be desirable. Coppermine could be changed from an informal campground into a formal one or a private sector could run a campground on the edge of the Park whether … Read the rest

APRIL 3: Meeting at Parks Office

 

 

About a dozen people met in the Mural room and Mike Stevens and Ryan Duffy gave us an update on park activities.

 

Mike explained in much detail the events of the January Northern Grampians Complex fire. On Jan 15 several lightening strikes started fires across the Grampians, Parks, CFA and DEPI staff worked hard to put these fires out, but inaccessibility and bad weather lead to a couple of fires in the Wartook area not being able to be controlled. Mike described to us how events unfolded and showed us a program called Phoenix Rapidfire which illustrated how the fire progressed. The program had been used during the fire to predict the fire behaviour and to give people warning of the likely path it would affect. Phoenix Rapidfire was developed after the 2006 bushfires and has been improved each year as more information from each fire season … Read the rest

Weather report

 

It is still so dry here. Parts of the Park are looking quite stressed, and hot windy days are still scary.

Halls Gap received 23.0mm for March bringing the progressive total to 65.0mm,this compares to the same period last year with a progressive total of 88.0mm, and we thought that was dry!

Pomonal FOGG member Phil Williams has been recording the rainfall at his place since 1980 and says that should be long enough to discern some trends. The most obvious feature of the graph is the large variability from year to year.

From the lowest, 346mm in 1982, to the highest, 1080mm in 1992. This variability means that the ‘average’ annual rainfall is no use in predicting how much rain is likely in any one year. Also it makes it difficult to discern any trends. We can even out this variability by looking at a decade at … Read the rest

Grampians National Park – An Update – David Roberts April 2014

 

The Grampians National Park has had more than its fair share natural disasters. The recent history is compelling with 3 major landscape scale bushfires in 8 years (2006, 2013, 2014, totalling 87% of the park) as well as record floods and landslides in 2011. In dollar terms, the cost of reinstating destroyed assets over the past 8years is fast approaching $10million, the cost however to our environmental and cultural values is more difficult to measure, and requires specific expertise, short, medium and longer term monitoring to understand the impacts negative and/or positive.

 Any impact in the Grampians from landscape scale events is felt hard by the local tourism industry. Annually, the Grampians National Park directly and indirectly contributes an estimated $400million into the Regional economy of Western Victoria(GT 2014). The Park is one of the most popular tourism destinations outside of Melbourne and the 12 Apostle and … Read the rest

President’s Report

 

This time last year we had an excellent article from Wendy on how we as a committee have to work out which issues we should lobby on, and which we do as private citizens. It is still so relevant today. (You can find it on our website). Our priority is always the issues which affect our Grampians National Park. These may be issues also affecting other Parks or may be ones unique to the Grampians.

 

Our committee is particularly worried about the attitude of both our federal and State governments towards the environment . Both seem intent on watering down most of the legislation which currently protects our environment. There are so many examples from all over the country- it is really depressing. Too many national parks already, “abolishing red tape” on vegetation protection etc, re-introducing cattle into the Alpine National Park …. the list goes on and … Read the rest

Editorial April 2014 Newsletter

 

Greetings from the still so very dry Grampians. And fire ravaged yet once again. The January fires have burnt much of the northern section of the Park. Our Park staff have had a torrid time, and now face months of hard work. We offer them our sympathy and our thanks. In Dave Robert’s piece you will see just what a huge task they have ahead of them.

 

It has also severely impacted several of our FOGG members. Judith Thompson, Bill and Hennie Neve, Ewen Johnson, Rob Lucas and Bonnie Carter and others all had the fire roar through their properties and lost sheds and equipment. One member (Rodney Thompson) lost the old cottage he was living in next to Judith and his car. Proo Pyke’s property was burnt; they lost fences but no buildings, Other members lost holiday houses. I am sure all of you will sympathise with … Read the rest

Friends of Grampians Gariwerd