Articles – Page 68 – Friends of Grampians Gariwerd

AUTUMN CALENDAR

GWANGEL MORRON – season of honeybees

Mid March to early June

ACTIVITY CALENDAR

Please note some changes of dates from the summer newsletter.

April 5 Sunday: Park Heritage Day at Brim Springs See inside for more information.

April 4 – 9 Mt William Creek walk. See last issue or the website www.platypus.org.au for more information. You can walk all the way from Kalymna Falls to Dadswells Bridge, or just one or two days. Register with Victoria on 5358 4410 or 0409 556 526.

May 9 Saturday: Celebration of 25 years of our Friends’ Group. Parks Victoria will host a dinner and present us with a digital photo frame. See inside for more details.

This day was to have been a working bee, now postponed to June 28.

June 27 Saturday 10 am: Red Gum Walk working bee. Spraying weeds, installing the new signs etc. See inside for more … Read the rest

WEBSITE REPORT

All the articles that appear in the newsletter go up on the website, along with photos which are hard to reproduce in a photocopied newsletter.

If you would prefer to not receive the printed version, you can either have an electronic version emailed to you, or you can request to automatically receive an email each time the website is updated.

Please email our secretary Frank if you would like to change the way you receive your newsletter or updates.

Even if you prefer to continue to receive a printed version, you may like to check out the website every now and then for photos and updates.

We receive some interesting mail via the site. Mostly students doing assignments, who we are usually able to help, but also the odd compliment from unexpected sources, like the Stawell expatriate in Holland who commented on the quality of our images and wanted us … Read the rest

BEYOND THE SMOKE BOOK UPDATE

As reported previously, the book is now in profit, and proceeds are being shared between the SHARE Bushfire Disaster Appeal, and FOGG, with a small percentage going to Grampians Community Health who are still managing the finances. We also plan to make books available free to Friends of parks affected by fire and other relevant community groups. … Read the rest

RED GUM WALK UPDATE

As reported previously, PV’s insurance policy will replace the infrastructure burnt at the walk in January 2006, but not the table stolen in 2008.

We have had various discussions as to what to do with the walk now it is so changed and with sections completely overgrown. It does not receive a large number of visitors, and most of our original interpretive signwork won’t be relevant for many years to come.

It was decided to keep open only a portion of the original walk, a shortish loop, with a straight section leading to the (now burnt and fallen) huge old “walk through” tree. PV have already replaced the “wishing well” noticeboard near the car park and will fund a number of signs along the track. The signage will focus on the forest’s response to fire. We are hoping to reuse some of the original drawings by Sue McInnes and Ken … Read the rest

TWENTYFIVE YEARS OF FRIENDS OF GRAMPIANS-GARIWERD

2009 marks the 25^th anniversary of the founding of a Friends’ Group for our wonderful Grampians National Park and PV want to recognise this by hosting a dinner for us on May 9 and presenting us with a digital photo frame. The invitation from Parks Victoria will be sent out shortly. Do make a real effort to come along and do bring your old photos and other memorabilia to share.

Your committee had fun looking at suggestions for images and have decided that rather than a conventional framed photograph, we would rather have a digital frame showing a slide show of activities we have been involved in over the years. This could be set up somewhere near the Brambuk shop or the cafe where it will hopefully attract some new members. We could also change the selection of images from time to time. It is more expensive, but we … Read the rest

BRUSH TAILED ROCK-WALLABY PROJECT CHANGES

FAREWELL TO TONY & EMILY

FOGGs also want to say thank you and goodbye to Tony and Emily. We have had Tony present us with much informatiion on the animals, we have helped in exploring possible habitat for other colonies, both before and after the re-introduction project, we have supported their work by donating a microscope to help with the research into the diet of the animals, we campaigned to have their portraits on our registration labels, we have explored other ways of getting more support.It is sad to see Tony and Emily go. We hope they both have good memories of their time here. And we hope that the colony becomes not just viable, but thriving. It was always realised that there was a likelihood of losing animals in an experiment like this, despite so much care going into it. The collars on the animals allow park staff to … Read the rest

FROM THE PARKES DESK 2009

Graham Parkes

Staff

It is drawing close to the time when we farewell our seasonal fire crew for another year. Many of the crew have worked in Halls Gap previously and we hope to see them return again next season, but hopefully it will be a much quieter and less hectic season than this year.

The Parks Victoria fire recovery staff who commenced work in October 2008 have made great progress on the Mackey’s Peak to Pinnacle Track, having so far completed the construction of over 345 stone steps and are now awaiting the fabricated steel for the new steel steps for the very steep sections. A second crew have been busy on the Zumstein to McKenzie Falls walk, with around 51m of steel walkway installed and a three metre bridge replaced. They are working towards completing the track by end June 2009.

We were fortunate to have the support … Read the rest

CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE PARK

It is with pleasure that we publish an article by a very special person. Suzy Skurrie has the important role of looking after cultural heritage in the Park, both Indigenous and European.

She does this while both contributing greatly to her community as an elder, and coping with ongoing health issues.

Make sure you catch up with Suzy at the upcoming heritage day at Brim Springs!

A RECORD TO THE GARIWERD LANDSCAPE

The Grampians (Gariwerd) landscape of western Victoria is renowned for its spectacular landforms and scenic beauty, its diverse flora and fauna and its significant Aboriginal heritage places.

The Gariwerd landscape holds the imprint of thousands of generations of Aboriginal people’s connection to the land.

This connection to country refers not only to archaeological artefacts, but also to the cultural landscape, the dreaming tracks and trade and travel routes, significant and sacred landscape features and to the mythological … Read the rest

ADVISORY GROUP REPORT

The AG met on February 3rd with a busy agenda. We were given the progress report on the Brush-tailed rock wallabies (Suzy Skurrie mentioned she had been doing some research and discovered that the indigenous name for the BTRW was Billewirrup. Suzy suggested perhaps it could be called the Billewirrup project.

Major works (both fire related and new) include:

Completion of car park at Brambuk – new entry, bitumen etc. It’s the same size as before but with clearer bays and separate entry and exit.

The track from Halls Gap to the Pinnacle was due to open by Easter, but this is now likely to be later following major fire activity elsewhere in the state and extreme temperatures. All the new stone steps (340 of them) are complete, but there are still steel steps to be installed.

On the McKenzie Falls to Zumstein walk around 51m of steel boardwalk has … Read the rest

ACTIVITY REPORTS

January 10 : Annual Ptilotus erubescens (Hairy- tails) Survey. Once again we had very pleasant weather with which to start the year’s activities. This year we handled the counting of flower heads differently, with individuals keeping their own tallies for each area. This worked far better than the old system. But we still need to sharpen the understanding of the boundaries of the areas. That said, we have now got many years of fairly reliable data which can be used to measure grazing impacts in the area. We still need someone to wrestle the data into a short article.

The total number (2566) was well down on last year’s very high number (5696), but still healthy. Numbers fluctuate yearly, ranging from only 181 at our first count in 1997 to a high of 6,152 in 2004. Consistent with previous counts, the benefits of excluding grazers was very evident. It was … Read the rest