Life and Wildlife on the Banks of the Murrumbidgee
There's nothing better than a beautiful day out on the hillside, unless it's a beautiful day out with lots of lovely people planting trees. This year we had the wonderful team from Justin Borevitz's lab at ANU, along with another hundred yellow box (eucalyptus melliodora) that they raised from seed, genotyped and either pampered or subjected... Continue Reading →
I've started adding some tiny triangles to my collection of revegetation plots over our hills. My plans for tree-planting have been evolving over the past four years since we moved back to live at the family farm. I started knowing we needed to do something substantial, because the small amounts of revegetation we'd been doing... Continue Reading →
All those months waiting for rain in the autumn, and now we have too much. While the hills are green and the ground is perfect for planting, this year's fences are delayed because vehicles that try to get up with loads of concrete and posts are in grave danger of getting bogged. Or sliding... Continue Reading →
The Big Wilt has finally come. Every year when the frosts arrive, the summer plants die back and make way for the ones that can take the cold. This year we waited a long time for the changeover. In some ways it was a vindication of my messy, lazy style of vegetable gardening, the one... Continue Reading →
Even in the dark I can tell when the river has started to flood. I love to hear the normal soft rushing sound at night, a little like distant traffic. This is more. It's a freeway roar that means big standing waves crashing against the rocks. Big water on the move is magnificent. Whole islands... Continue Reading →
A few old trees make all the difference when you're doing a bird survey. The bare, newly planted paddocks on Carkella and Adnamira were limited to a few species, mainly parrots (galahs,red-rumps, rosellas) and a small family of magpies. On a grey morning in April three ornithologists from Canberra Ornithologists Group (Sue Lashko, Chris Davey... Continue Reading →
The Great Aerial Ocean above our heads, for me, is a reminder that we all live on the one planet. Only a thin band of atmosphere comes between us and the inhospitable vastness of space. I love that living here, we now have a grandstand view of the turmoil, as well as the sunny days,... Continue Reading →
Our lovely neighbour Cathy Campbell has a new project. It's called "Managing Mange in the Mullion" (that's the title of the Facebook group also) and involves counting wombats, working out how many of them are affected by sarcoptic mange and treating them using "burrow flaps" that deliver a dose of medicine automatically at the entry to... Continue Reading →
It's that time of year again, when we happily send some young trees out naked into the winter. The ones that seem large enough have their wildlife and frost resistant covers removed, so that we can recycle them for this year's plantings. That's hundreds of covers to be jerked up, flattened and carried back... Continue Reading →
Before I got glasses for short-sight at the age of eleven, I used to wonder why people made such a fuss about birds. Most of them were invisible as far as I was concerned. The only ones I never had trouble seeing were the big ones: the egrets, the Wedge-Tailed Eagles, the black swans (which... Continue Reading →
As I wandered outside on my way to bed a few nights ago, I noticed a speck of red light on a hilltop. A star? I've been tricked before by how bright they can be in the bush. A red star? Venus? Wrong direction. Definitely not a car tail-light, on the top of a rocky... Continue Reading →
In the darkness, I heard the dog barking and scuffling with something in the gravel driveway. I assumed it was a beetle. Obviously something small. But when I went over to look I could see it was a snake. Calypso was dodging in and out enthusiastically. So much for the snake-avoidance training. I shouted at... Continue Reading →
Brazil's coastal rainforest could hardly be more distant from a sheep farm in New South Wales. Yet I found visiting it both inspirational and helpful for my own plans. The rainforest plant life is nothing like our dry eucalypts and grasses. While there are a few ancient relatives of Australian plants, most of the vegetation looks as... Continue Reading →
Tree planting doesn't always go as planned. In 2011, before we actually moved back to Australia, I spoke to Graham Fifield at Greening Australia about being part of their WOPR (Whole Paddock Rehabilitation) program. That program is designed to revegetate an area of 10 hectares or more, using bands of trees and shrubs directly seeded on the contours.... Continue Reading →
One way to stop topsoil from disappearing from under our feet is to use loose vegetation. Anything from grass and weeds to big logs will help catch it as it flows past. The Southern ACT Catchment Group ran a workshop recently with Cam Wilson from Earth Integral as the expert advisor on how to make... Continue Reading →
I was quite cautious when the idea of a "Green Army" was proposed. It seemed like a political stunt. And the cost of the payslips was going to be subtracted from Landcare, a community organization I admire a great deal. Who was this Army going to attack? The trees? Us? Who was going to join... Continue Reading →
We don't often see Eastern Long Necked Turtles (Chelodina longicollis), as they spend most of their time in the water. The Murrumbidgee River is rarely clear enough to see to the bottom where they hang out. We do sometimes see them hiking overland after rain. When you pick them up they not only hide as... Continue Reading →
Last weekend we planted in two different directions at once. We finished the final small tree lots that are part of the chain of connections across the Murrumbidgee river for small birds. That makes nine tree lots for connectivity only, plus two extra areas, a shelter paddock that used to be a calf-feeding area,... Continue Reading →
At sunset on Anzac Day we planted an Aleppo Pine (pinus halepensis), a descendent of the Lone Pine at the centre of the 1915 battle at Gallipoli in Turkey. I don't usually plant non-native trees, but this one was special. The Rev. Peter Dillon, a former Army Chaplain, and Dad of our neighbour Leonie, gave a... Continue Reading →
Just before the weather began to turn cooler, a stranger came flapping through the garden. It was large enough that you could expect to hear the wings beating. I spent some fruitless hours looking at pictures of Delia butterflies, since the last impressive butterfly I saw was an Imperial Jezebel (Delias harpalyce) in a neighbour's... Continue Reading →
One Bend In The River 