Marysville Tree Planting

Our Lorax Project has been busy in the Marysville area lately.
Recently with the help of students from Kilberry Valley Primary School we planted many trees and tall shrubs at Camp Marysville to provide shade and shelter.

Students from Kilberry Valley Primary School

We also created a bush tucker garden using shrubs and smaller native herbs and lilies.
The plants are indigenous food plants that were used by aboriginal people in the area such as Mountain Pepper, Native Raspberry, Dianella sp. and Prickly Current Bush.

Students from Kilberry Valley Primary School

We also had a very enthusiastic team from NAB spend a day planting trees and shrubs along the Taggerty River.

Volunteers from NAB at the Taggerty River

The plantings will help create an important corridor through farmland for wildlife moving along the river between the east and west sections of the Marysville State Forest.
It will also provide protection from wind and sun for stock on the neighbouring cattle farm.

Thank you to Fifteen Trees and there supporters for providing the funding for some of the plants.

Seed collecting for Lorax Project

Seed collecting activities began on the 20th of December and have been intensive over the past 10 days. Sarah Roberts and Janet have been working together to collect seeds in the Marysville, Eildon , Cathedral Range , Lake Mountain and Strathbogie Ranges areas.
Cath Olive is collecting around Taggery , Yea and the Black Range . We have bumped into her twice while collecting last week at Locksely and Gooram plus I think I spotted her 'stockings' tried onto pea bushes this morning at Strathbogie !
David Wakefield is collecting around Flowerdale and Strath Creek .
Tim Stewart from Treeproject is collecting from Glenburn to Kinglake back towards Melbourne.
Chris Cobern collects around Kinglake when he gets a chance .
We are building a comprehensive collection of understorey seed from the fire areas to be used
in future community and volunteer revegetation projects from peas and wattles to wetland plants , creepers ,wildflowers & grasses.

Landcare Coordinators tour fire affected areas

It's now 16 months since the Upper Goulburn Landcare Network (UGLN) began its fire-recovery program, helping landholders rebuild fences, revegetate bare areas, install nest boxes for homeless fauna etc.

It was time to let Landcare Coordinators from other parts of the catchment (GBCMA) know what we've achieved, as well as the huge challenges still facing the community and environment.



Rain following the fires did incredible damage in some areas, turning clear-flowing streams into sludge and silting up dams and stream-beds throughout the catchment. This (at left) used to be a lush, wet gully above a sizable dam. The gully is gone and the dam full of sediment.








The town of Marysville is slowly starting to re-build, and the scars on the surrounding mountains will also take a long time to heal.


Still, the bush is regenerating well in many areas. Although most of the Alpine Ash and Mountain Ash forests still look like a matchstick landscape, many trees have re-sprouted and are covered in new shoots. And the dead, standing trees are not wasted. They'll provide important hollows for lots of different animals in the decades to come, once the re-sprouting trees recover and seedlings grow to form a new forest. Possums, gliders, marsupial mice, parrots, kookaburras etc all require hollows for denning and nesting, as well as a healthy forest, for survival.




And regeneration on the forest floor in many areas has been spectacular. In some areas plant species that had all but disappeared from the landscape are making a comeback; their seeds have lain dormant in the soil for perhaps decades, waiting for the right conditions to germinate and start a new cycle of life - 'Acuna Matata'.


We've even been told of a rare marsupial mouse, the not-so-Common Dunnart (Sminthopsis murina) that has been found, for the first time ever!, in the Cathedral Ranges. Presumably it was there before, but in such low numbers that no-one ever saw them. Dunnarts, along with many other species in our landscape, are known to be post-fire specialists; they need the occasional fire to create the right kind of habitat for them to flourish, and the species-rich regrowth that's regenerated after the fires is perfect.



Just like the example at left on a peak overlooking Marysville. here there are grasses, lillies, flowering peas, creepers etc and in spring there will likely be orchids and other wildflowers. It'll be worth visiting again in Sept/Oct/Nov!