27/09/2018
You had to be there. Right there in the landscape. Travelling east from Albany beyond the outlier Stirling Ranges toward the more coastal Fitzgerald Ranges in the distance then veering inland to the space inbetween the two national parks. Exceptional stuff can happen in those spaces in between, similar to the complexities that might exist in the silence between words in conversation.
Outliers are wonderful islands of species and habitat amongst a sea of human altered landscapes, but with relatively low resilience to disturbance compared to larger scale intact ecosystems. They often only remain in the landscape because of being more difficult to clear and agriculturally earn a living off. Often rocky, swampy or steep.
Our field trip was called the Fitz-Stirlings. I thought it was called this with organisers unable to decide which sites to visit due to the abundance in the vicinity of the Stirling and Fitzgerald Ranges. Trusting the mystery tour would be decided depending on the weather and who and what was available, I signed up to my first ever Bush Heritage Field Trip. Standing in between the ranges gave a real sense of the connectivity work: seeing the the two mountain range public reserve systems, the bush heritage blocks and other nature reserves plus the opportunities for connectivity through adjoining farming properties with remnant bush and restoration potential.
After years of missing the opportunities of participating in a field trip, I was determined for this one to be a goer. It was a ripper of a trip if you are like me and tend to be awestruck by the amazingness of things. Australia has an internationally recognised biodiversity hotspot in the southwest of our continent. For many of my friends and colleagues this is where we live (can you believe it!?). The Fitz-Stirling Bush Heritage properties are proving to be a hotspot within a hotspot. No international travel, no passport needed; no language or exotic disease issues. It’s all right here with first world travel, food and facilities. That’s right - facilities - out there between a paddock and the bush, after years of planning and commitment, the region can now boast a hotspot research centre where resident and visiting ecologists have accomodation and meeting areas; with the added resilience of onsite water (if it rains) and solar powered electricity (no shortage of sun-rays).
The Fitz-Stirlings sits in the Gondwana Link Landscape scale project aiming to provide habitat connectivity in a 1000km sweeping arc of land from the wetter western areas to the eastern, inland drier areas. The connectivity of bushland, or habitat, provides a greater opportunity for resilience of species through disturbances eg fire (don’t get me started on that one), drought or climate change, as they can more easily move through from one area to another.
My head is bursting from the scale of the rehab work being done, from the detail of the knowledge collected along the way and the breadth of the cooperativeness across the community.
We visited a privately owned Bush Heritage property. Massive replanting has been accomplished over several years and perhaps ongoing, with canola grown on the side to keep things solvent. It seems every single plant in the reveg project is known and loved. Little ones with wire netting over them to protect from roos and rabbits, or marked out with a peg. The diversity and density of the plantings gave an appearance to me of being in a botanic park. Which of course it is - except not in a city but out here in its own place where it belongs. The owners planted four different seed mixes across the property, qualifying this info with knowing nature might use over a hundred seed mixes. This reminded me of species and individuals (plants & animals) existing in what I like to term an ecocline, rather than discrete ecosystems. There are of course common associations, yet with almost infinite variation.
We were chauffeured by the wonderful Lawrence from the Busy Blue Bus service. He provided anecdotes along the way, but out here he was learning alongside the rest of us who had gathered together from across the continent for this very special day out. Simon from the local Bush Heritage ‘office’ informed us of the ages of plantings as we drove along the farm track enabling us to make easy comparisons on the difference a year or two and up to five years makes, and comparing to adjacent remnant bush. With Sally and Anna being the coordinators and promoters from the Melbourne Office, and another staff member on holidays in the west with her partner also joining us, volunteering as hosts and photographer, we were well looked after.
The simple presence of a puff ball, and fungi in general, signals a healthy ecosystem. That is one of the many gems of demonstrated info shared with us over the day out. This particular puff ball was on the edge of some remnant bush adjacent to a seeded paddock that seemed to be only a sea of daisies. Closer inspection of the furrows revealed the beginnings of a woodland forest. Either side of the seeded paddock were slightly older plantings showing an astonishing rate of growth in the three to five year range. Two reasons out here for creating furrows are to push aside the relatively fertile soil layer from recent cropping history, and to create the opportunity for water to more easily soak in where it’s needed for new seedlings. The species out here are adapted to the very poor soils. Interestingly these soils still vary across the paddock revealing differences in germination and other aspects of growth. Mono culture cropping tends to imply some homogeneity in soil type across the landscape. Stripping away this fertile layer reveals variations of clay, gravel and sand that can inform best planting combinations. A Restoration Ecologist began the work in this case with numerous pit soil testing.
We stopped to look at numerous sites within the 3 Bush Heritage properties. With the sun blazing in the early afternoon of our warmest day in months, we were dropped at the edge of a sparse looking, recently tilled and w**d infested paddock. The sky was birger as the expanse of the land opened up. A stunning and rarely seen view of the eastern end of The Stirling Ranges provided the back drop to what we were to realise on closer inspection was a successful direct seeding project. As the light intensity dismissed in the fading afternoon we were stopped in the heat at yet another site where we left the bus enthralled at the new collection of plants in front of us. This time the bus left us, driving on up the track without a backwards glance. For a moment I could feel an abandonment similar to “The Natural Way of Things” when a bunch of women were left on a rural property, expecting to be collected again.
One particular donor is really keen on having black cockatoos return in large numbers. Simple, thought Bush Heritage, embarking on mass plantings of their favourite foods species to feed the birds. Germination gaps in the direct seeding areas are filled with Proteacea seedlings. Feeling the isolation of exploring new country, and in the absence of traffic noise and other machinery, everything felt so out the way and left to itself apart from the seeding and other planting. But it seems here too, every secret is known, this time by Angela, the local Bush Heritage ecologist. Part of her work includes documenting the return of animal species, with mammals being the slowest to return to reveg areas. Understandably I guess. She showed us a mallee fowl nest, where two young love birds have dragged every bit of leaf litter within a 500m radius and scraped nearby dirt to build, reshape and rebuild their fabulous nest. While we are all enthralled with this, Angela checked a nearby Honey Possum nest box to find a mumma with her five babies. These babies get a much more nurturing beginning than the mallee fowl chicks who hatch then run away. Having ground dwellers is seeming key to keeping down fuel loads on the woodland forest floor. Small mammals scurrying around and searching for food breaks down the leaf litter and turns things over, while birds continue their pecking and flicking of food and other materials. What ecological achievements could have been fast tracked with the millions allocated to huge park burns that too often burn far too hot over too wide an area or get out of control. Often also burning too frequently, keeping the bush in perpetually dense undergrowth and not allowing it to mature to the state of a more open lower storey.
Replanting ‘trials’ over time have revealed that w**ds such as the cape daisy are eventually out competed, in part due to their seasonal occurrence. The plantings are also not densely done, allowing individual plants to grow to their optimum shape without have to fiercely compete with their neighbours, usIng energy in growing tall instead of the much more useful act in a newly establishing ecosystem of flowering profusely, attracting insects which in turn attracts birds, reptiles and other invertebrates then it’s off!!
Gaining something approaching a pre-settlement flora mix is close to impossible. For starters the sedges are incredibly hard to kick start with limited seed collected, limited germination and limited seedling success. Our native plants in this hot spot of hot spots have limited spreading methods: the only fauna vectors being emus and one species of pigeon. Essentially, where the seed falls is where it grows. Eighty to a hundred years was suggested as an approximate timeframe for seed to arrive from nearby areas with an even more heterogeneous species mix over a broader range of plant families.
The New South Wales guests on the trip were surprised at how recent the clearing has been in the southwest WA wheatbelt with a lot being post WWII. No sooner had the settlers of this area been paid to clear the land, the government had turned around within decades and was beginning to pay and otherwise encourage farmers to replant and stop clearing. There is a quote in the Williams Woolshed museum with a farmer scratching his head at the bureaucratic merry go round.
Over millions of years since the splitting of the supercontinent Gondwana the low fertility ancient soils in this very geologically stable place has produced plant life that has responded with a range of ‘look at me’ adaptations - inviting pollinators to choose them for having the best shape or colour of flower, while outdoing each other in deterring herbivores from eating their prickly sclerophyll leaves. I got a glimpse of a suggestion during the field trip that the diversity of plant life is also due to the very long time without major disturbance evolution has had at its disposal. In contrast to relatively simple northern hemisphere systems following repeated glaciation or volcanic activity.
What’s in a name? Who were Fitzgerald and Stirling? It’s rhetorical. We know almost without exception that significant landmarks are named after pseudo-exploring or temporarily governing white men. (Pseudo-exploring because it was already known to indigenous inhabitants. And temporarily governing as a contrast to millennia of custodianship).The name Fitzgerald, and now Fitz-Stirling too, have now become synonymous with the biological hotspot and biosphere region. They are also the hazy mystical mountains seen when looking along the coast from near Bremer Bay, home to Southern Right Whales inshore during winter-spring and Orcas offshore during summer-autumn.
How different we become as a people by the very nature of our landscape. The ancientness of it layered with our colonial impact. The millennia of habitation and custodianship by indigenous Australians, of their knowing stuff we are striving to re-know. How different it must be for those of us born, bred or choosing this country as home, to look out from within ourselves compared to what our ancestors looked out to in our ancestral homes, to the bigness of this place, the fullness of the southern sky, and the newness of the colours, the form and how it functions. It’s an exciting time to be Australian where we have the opportunity to redefine the reasons for our uniqueness by embracing the past in the context of what we know now. In the southwest of the country, ecological research is producing some cutting edge results Taking action to restore ecosystems on a landscape scale, enhanced with the inevitable spiritual and scientific epiphanies from working closely with nature, springs us into a future worth shouting about.
Stresses are evident from this year’s very low rainfall. The areas south and north of these bush heritage sites have been well watered but an approximately 100km wide strip has missed out from both directions. Plants die and the water tank at the new research centre hasn’t filled as anticipated. Other stresses across the landscape were alluded to. None of this seems to dampen the spirits of those working in the Fitz-Stirlings biodiversity hotspot in the Fitzgerald Biosphere in the Gondwana Link Landscape scale project area.
Accidentally written when sitting down with the intention of continuing Tim Winton’s latest novel set in the West Australian wheatbelt. Our bus driver nearly spilled the beans on the second half of the book and I had to abruptly stop him. The field trip and the novel might have merged now, the two combining in my dreams. Paraphrasing Stephen Fry from ‘Last Chance to See’: myth and knowledge are inseparable, with all truths held in the former.
