Yinnar, Yinnar South Landcare Group - May 2023

J. Duncan for Yinnar, Yinnar South Landcare

Autumn has brought a lot of activity for our group. We are finishing off the funded part of our last Victorian Landcare Grant which had several components.

Fencing

The Morwell River component of the project helped our members with fencing materials and weed control along two very steep sections of river bank on their property. This win-win project means that stock will no longer tumble down the bank and into the river. For the river, it means that another section is fenced and providing habitat; while the vegetation we are planting on the site will slow down run-off and help with flood mitigation. The fence also protects valuable remnant vegetation on the site.

The fence is constructed with two electric wires and four plain which will allow koalas and other animals to move though the landscape more easily. The main challenge of this project was the topography.

Planting

There were two other streamside sites in our grant. Along Bellbrook Creek in Yinnar more indigenous vegetation was planted before the 2021 floods. It is now being replaced, as the new plantings didn’t survive. This site has been an on-going project, and anything that had been in the ground for two or more years was able to withstand what was a really big flood.

The floods also cramped our style at our big planting site along Upper Middle Creek Road. One factor was that the road was closed for months due to a landslip. Then there were all sorts of machines in there working on causeways across the creek that had been washed out in the floods. When we finally could get in to assess our site and plan some further work, we found it growing strongly where it hadn’t been washed away.

The sustainable gardening workshops we hosted with the Yinnar Community Garden and Food for All Latrobe Valley were funded by Latrobe City, but still formed part of our group’s in-kind contribution to our grant.

Greenhouse

Our greenhouse was badly beaten up by the storms we had in the winter and spring of 2021. The roof window looks as though it ended up at the bottom of the dam on the other side of a nearby paddock.

We have been chipping away at getting it rebuilt and back to full functionality. Once its computer is working again, it should be good to go. Meanwhile we have had plants in foster care all over the district as the little alternative greenhouse where we have been growing them is just that – little.

We are also growing a bigger range of plants than we have previously, which is interesting and has had some great successes and more than a few failures.

Weed Control Budgeree Bushland Reserve

On April 13 we had our annual Sycamore Slaughter at the Budgeree Bushland Reserve. Eight volunteers had a great day in this beautiful bit of remnant forest. We are now into the sixteenth year of this project, and it was great to have one of our earliest workers on the project stop by and say hello. We were advised early on that we would not need to plant this site as there would be enough natural re-growth of native vegetation coming through once the maples were removed, and this is proving to be the case.

There is still a lot of work to do at the bottom of the block near the creek where previous control measures have only been partially successful. So far none of this re-growth is big enough to form seeds and re-infest a wider area, but it will be a bit of a race against time for the next few years.

Next Activities.

By the time this is published, we will have had our stall at the Yinnar Memorial Hall Market on May 7.

After that we have a volunteer activity planned to remove tree guards from our Middle Creek planting site.

May 14 (Sunday) – Middle Creek tree guard removal. 11am on site Upper Middle Creek Road Yinnar South; or 10.45a.m. at Martin Walker Reserve

We are currently trying to find out what has been eating our plants inside our electric fence at our Billys Creek block. We have put our wildlife cameras up there and will check them in a few weeks time. We will then be replacing these plants in the next couple of months after it starts raining and hopefully before the access track gets too boggy.

To Contact Us:

Phone: Rebecca Turnbull 0403 972 437
Email: yinnar.landcare@gmail.com
Web: https://www.landcarevic.org.au/groups/westgippsland/yinnar-south/
or search for Yinnar Landcare in your browser.