- Sep 11, 2018
For several years now I have tried to photograph this tiny plant out on a buckshot gravel ridge in the Kara Kara National Park.
A small patch of these 4-5mm high plants is adjacent to one of our conservation plots.
I thought it would be easy to identify- just get a shot or two of the flowers and we would be away! The first year, I missed the flowers- a few tiny dried-up dark-red bits on one plant showed up on the computer screen. The next year, 2016,a wet year, the plants disappeared and White-winged Choughs seemed to be the culprits; beak-shaped holes were everywhere. 2017 came along and I had a good choice of plants to snap when I realised that I needed a supermacro function on the camera. Not good enough- a Panasonic Lumix shot on macro and blown up on the computer.Not enough detail and overexposed.
The use of a digital microscope showed a hairy, cobwebby tube sprouting 5 dark red, 4 or 5 petalled flowers.
So this year, after getting a camera with a super macro function I tried again.
2018 would have to be one of our driest years in the last 4 decades and the ground is bare in many places.
Chough holes are everywhere, grasses are chewed down to their roots and there are few plants of any sort about.
My little mystery is reduced to a few scattered plants on the south-east facing slope amongst Yellow Gums (Euc. leucoxylon). Even through the camera lens it is very difficult to see if there are any flowers so it is a case of point and shoot... and hope, otherwise it takes several trips to get enough shots with the desired features. Here is the first photo taken 26 Aug 2018 with an old Konica Minolta DiMAGE 3- it has great telephoto capability and 2 macro settings- a treasure.
This is the plant with the flower assembly forming in the middle, covered with cobwebby hairs
Flowering today, 9th August, the greeny-white tubes with hairy cobwebs topped with the dark-red of the "petals" makes these flowers nearly impossible to see with the naked eye. Each tubular flower would be 2-3 mm in length.
So, very nice, but what is it? A clue. Common Bow Flower- Millotia tenuifolia, which also grows in the same area.
My bet is Millotia perpusilla- Tiny Bow Flower. It is listed in Beauglehole's Vascular Plant List for our region- North Central. At no more than 5mm tall, the name seems apt.
- Jul 6, 2018
I deduce that before Victoria was grazed and mined our waterways were very different. Early surveys seem to affirm this: maps of the plains and broad valleys often include the italic notation ‘chain of ponds’. Doubtless, dense or very mature riparian vegetation lined their banks.
In my youth I roamed the reaches and cut-off bends of the straightened-out, de-snagged Latrobe River, cleared from time to time of their numerous stands of silver wattle, and eventually I read Peter Andrews’ thoughts on Australian flood plain management. (Basically he says: Hold water as long as you can, where it falls!)
Then, perusing Google Earth some years ago, I noticed unusual features along Middle Creek - 10 km SW of St Arnaud. As you moved upstream the raw gullies, so characteristic of northern Victoria, gave way to – yes!!! – a chain of ponds. On-ground examination later with the landowner confirmed my assumptions.
I could see that, once hoofed animals such as sheep and cattle displaced the gentler indigenous grazers, the newcomers, tracking in and out to drink, broke down the intervening earthen barriers between the pools, over which runoff had for millennia more or less gently trickled. Continuous gullies soon opened up.
Here is part of what I saw, thanks to Google.
Note the creek is still fairly intact where the cover is better - obviously there’s been less grazing here of late - but to the east where the land is hammered even today, the creek is a gutter. All the way more or less to the Avoca!
Here are several other images of Middle Creek from above:
That led to work on our 95 hectares at Adams Road, where there are now 100 waterholes (we call them gilgai), mainly small water bodies - cf the original 10 ‘traditional’ farm dams – that we are slowly ‘decriminalising’! In other words, converting them to wetlands. See below:
John Douglas of Stuart Mill constructed these ponds on our land around 1983. There are 19 altogether over some 150 metres down a slope.
Adams Road – 2016 – 11 ponds in a row, thanks to Aaron Watts. We no longer leave banks on the downstream side. Since we seeded the bare areas a few totem-poles have germinated. We readily transplant sedges from existing dams.
Here’s my recent (experimental) painting on the subject:
Here is a new ‘chain of ponds’ on a Bendigo property, S of Whipstick Forest
So, what next?
A modest gully runs SW-NE through our block of box-ironbark country below near Stuart Mill. In parallel is a non-eroded grassy drainage line. I want to try to restore the former to a chain of ponds.
This means, I think, getting an excavator to reshape the bed of the eroded gully into a series of terraces, rather than the present constant fall, and filling the channel with as much natural debris – especially branches and heads of tree – as possible.
It might also mean an inconspicuous series of upslope riplines. And maybe judiciously thinning 5-10 percent of the vegetation within say 40 metres of the creekline - across the slope, not up- or downhill – to ‘roughen the catchment’, as a friend once put it.
Thinking broadly, the pre-European waterways of our state would have been full of large- and medium-sized debris.
During the heaviest floods, such as we had in 2010-11, this debris would have been swirled around like an auger, and the resulting silt continually flushed out, thereby keeping the holes deep, and rich in habitat and organic matter, as in food, or riparian wildlife. Remember, some holes along the Murray were apparently 40 metres deep.
- Jun 11, 2018
Meet some of the inhabitants at Ned's. We carried out some bird surveys as we were going around and put 27 or 28 species on the list- the most exciting being both Butcherbirds- Grey and Pied, a Whistling Kite pair with a nest right opposite the pumphouse and a flock of Black-faced Woodswallows at the pine sandridge. These were the only birds I captured on camera- the plants were easier. On the inlet, late afternoon- Crimson Rosella- yellow form
On the big inlet- Black Swans
Pterostylis biseta -Mallee Rustyhood, close relative to our Lowly Greenhood. Rosettes just emerging.
Early morning on the river- Darter drying off.
Early morning on the river- Pelican looking for breakfast.
Taken at the Inland Botanic Gardens, these are NOT gazanias! (Sturt Desert pea)
Early morning on the river again- 4 Wood Ducks
Just over the side fence for the shearers' quarters- stickybeaking Emu
Favoured food of many creatures furry and feathered- Enchylaena tomentosa, upright form- Ruby Saltbush
Under the Hill's Hoist- Mallee Ringnecks feeding on weed seeds.
Low groundocevr plant- Zygophyllum sp (Twinleaf)
In the garden- the best use for 2km of barbed wire- rolled up by the Green Army girls and endorsed by Chris and Russell!
