Friends of Morwell National Park - July 2022

For the activity we had Gordon, Matt, Joelle, Caitlin, Ken, Darren, Wendy, Anita and her friend Jenny. Jenny was keen to see some possums. There were apologies from Tamara, Mike, Cathy, Graeme, Jay and Rose.

Parks staff have decided to knock down and/or replace the information booth at the Kerry Road car park. Since only this booth and one picnic table survived the 2021 storms, it seems so wise to remove it. The broken BBQ, picnic table and fencing lost in the storms have yet to be replaced and there are no known plans for their replacement. As it has been many years since there have been information brochures about the walks, it makes poor sense to remove the only thing that explains which walks there are. Since the last activity Matt has removed our groups’ information from the information board, ready for removal.

The day was forecast for rain, so rain was very likely to disrupt the activity. We started at the car park and moved to the boxes closest to the car park. Matt explained how to operate the pole mounted camera to the group of interested new users (Matt had made more repairs to the camera since the summer activity). A challenge that made the activity more difficult was that a number of boxes had come down in the 2021 storms and need to be replaced or repaired. A list of boxes to be repaired or replaced was made and this will be done in our next activity.

During the activity we worked down the main track.

After Section C was completed the group stopped for lunch beside the track. During lunch it started to rain. It had been good to go for a few hours without rain, but we needed to finish after lunch. The pole mounted camera was not to get wet so the activity needed to finish at the first sign of decent rain. At the next activity we plan to finish the survey and make replacement and repairs to missing and damaged boxes.

Over the short activity we saw at least 19 sugar gliders and two ringtail possums in the boxes and multiple kangaroos, wallabies and koalas along the way.

August Activity

Sunday August 21, 10am The group will meet in the Junction Road car park to finish the winter survey of the nesting boxes and make repairs and replacement to some of the other nesting boxes. You will need to bring your lunch along with clothing and footwear suitable for the weather conditions on the day. Note - this a change from the original calendar.