| By Julie Constable IN SPRING the sweet pittosporums flowered. The garden was fragrant with their blossoms. One stately, buttressed tree stood in the north-west comer and a younger grove flourished on the eastern side. Thinner trunked, their pale bark was patterned with green lichen. Mr. G. Matheson, a settler in South Gippsland described Pittosporum undulatum in the 1880s: 'The pittosporum called native orange from its leaves having a resemblance to the cultured variety, was very ornamental ... It had a glossy, green leaf and sweet scented flowers; its seed pods were round and about the size of marbles, and in colour and shape resembled miniature oranges. (i) Also known as mock orange and native daphne, the sweet pittosporum is characterised by glossy leaves with undulating edges, hanging clusters of fragrant creamy flowers, little orange fruits which ripen and crack open to reveal red sticky seeds. We moved to the Strzelecki Ranges in the mid 1980s. The raven watched us from the cross atop a Norfolk pine - a man and a woman in their mid twenties carrying boxes from the gate to the verandah, struggling with the piano. The old weatherboard 1930s farm house suited us admirably: a study lined with shelves for my books where I could write and correct student work; sheds and space for Kim to work on sculptures. A narrow 'sun' room, which just fitted our biggest table looked out at the garden and the valley below. |  Julie Constable has won second prize in the inaugural Bass Coast prize for Non-Fiction with Pittosporum Flowering, a memoir of an environmental awakening. The author revives an old-fashioned exotic farm garden, learns more about the indigenous birds and plants and gradually becomes politicised. The memoir is interwoven with the familiar, fraught debate about whether sweet pittosporum, long regarded as an exotic weed, is in fact a valuable indigenous canopy tree. Her beautiful memoir alternates the focus from the large scale – the logging of native forests for wood chips – to caring for one’s own little patch, over which for a short time one has some influence. There is also the realisation that a garden, no matter how much it is loved, is only fleeting. |
I remember early on, Mr. L---, our landlord and farmer, who lived in a later model brick house across the road, inclining his head towards a young sweet pittosporum growing in the front garden, 'Noxious weed. Have to get rid of that.'
'No way,’ I thought. Thankful that he hadn't spotted the grove beyond the thicket of japonica, where I would sit listening to the whistles and squeaks of little birds and catch the bright streak of a speeding crimson rosella amongst all that green.
The garden, dating from the early 1900s had been planned on a moderately grand scale on a couple of acres. The plantings were an eclectic mix of European, South American and Asian species - old roses, a grove of datura, an Irish strawberry, japonica, beech, a huge Magnolia grandifolia, rhododendrons and birch trees. To the north east behind the house was a very neglected orchard, the pear trees too tall to mention and a feast for possums and flocks of young ravens each Autumn. Beyond that on the periphery of the garden, a huge Norfolk pine, some old, weathered cypresses and original tall blue gums lent a park like appearance. The curious presence of the tallest rough tree fem I have ever seen encouraged one to imagine what might have been. A survivor of the land clearing, it towered over the house more than twenty-five feet high. Over the following years, descendants of this giant seeded on the eastern side of the house, one uncomfortably close to the guest bedroom window. We left it and as it grew it pressed its fronds up against the window, until eventually it passed the gutter and spread umbrella-like.
A row of towering pine trees intimidated the house on the southern side. This was a familiar sight in South Gippsland, where it had been customary to plant a row of pines after clearing the land. Eighty, a hundred years later, they had grown old, gnarled and misshapen by the elements. Some formed grotesqueries in the landscape, louring over little farmhouses on bare hills. One night in a storm, a big one fell, groaning and crashing shaking the house and narrowly missing the car. The black cockatoos loved the cones, arriving in large flocks hooning around, cracking seeds, and occasionally dropping a whole cone with a loud bang on the shed roof.
We resurrected the old concrete birdbath and sat at the table mesmerised by fantails, superb fairy-wrens and thornbills diving in the water and sitting on the edge fluffed out to dry. Early on the ravens warily raided the compost. Over time the male became more relaxed, collecting mice I left on the fence post. As well as the long melancholy caw, he would emit a low cough when close by. I believe he was subtly announcing his presence and he would wait while I fetched a morsel. At the birdbath he would dunk a piece of bread briefly, lift and drain it on the side, delicately turning it once. He collected offerings and hid them under leaf litter for later. I worried he was too friendly and could get into trouble, but he was smart. In one of those slow country afternoon chats from his tractor, Mr. L - divulged that whenever he had a gun under arm, the ravens disappeared quick smart. I kept my liaisons to myself.
While I have a preference for wild and informal gardens and tangled thickets offer places for birds to feed and nest, this garden had really gone to seed - weed seeds that is. The presence of the older trees lent a dignified look, if you squinted and ignored what was going on at ground level and in the gaps. Surrounded by farmland, the garden was constantly being inundated with paddock grasses, those fertilised weeds farmers call pasture. The bulb and flower beds were growing hay. Tufted grasses could grow four feet in a week and
kikuyu grass stealthily crept underground knitting itself with the roots of anything else living there. In addition, thistles grew taller than me, periwinkle carpeted the ground and climbed the water tank and blackberries had run amok forming walls of prickly resistance.
Kim cleared walkways with clippers, scythe and saw. My first attempts at gardening were unfocused – frenzied weeding bouts dealing with an earlier design gone awry. Giant piles of weeds rotted while the beds grew them back again. The kikuyu grass was a physical challenge with its long matted root system. Heaving and cursing in a fierce tug of war, I was often the loser, falling backwards onto the ground. For years clipping back blackberries and digging out their roots I was nagged by a sense of existential terror at the magnitude and vigour of this plant. No matter how careful one is, cruel thorns removed your beanie, snagged your hair, scratched your arms and legs.
A walk through the paddocks to the east took one to a high ridge, from which the garden pronounced itself a bushy refuge in a vast grassland. A few remnant blue gums prqvided a tenuous link between the garden and the creek at the bottom of the hill. Along the creek a line of huge spreading mountain ash dominated the skyline. As the crow flies, the headwaters began a few kilometres away. Down the hill, the small townships of Foster, Toora and Welshpool lie on the plains around Comer Inlet.
Comer Inlet is embraced by the eastern Strzelecki Range in the north; the Hoddle Range to the west. The mountains of Wilsons Promontory, sometimes visible, often shrouded in sea fog rise across the water to the south. This is the country of the Brataualung, a clan of the Gunai-Kumai people, who have inhabited Gippsland for thousands of years. Their long custodianship over this country was severely disrupted by European occupation. Sealing and whaling was followed by a brief gold rush in the 1870s and the development of farming communities.
A hundred years of European agriculture certainly transformed the landscape. Sea walls and drained swamps diminished wetlands; large scale clearing resulted in massive sedimentation of the inlet. Largely a forested landscape, lack of grasslands meant the introduction of exotic grasses, such as clover and rye, making those hill and plains luminous green for much of the year. The area is part of the fertile crescent which runs down the eastern side of Australia – farmers don't need to irrigate here. We found the winters long and wet; gumboots or 'Gippsland slippers' a necessity, despite records showing a steady decline in rainfall. Accustomed to the high rainfall, farmers here complained when it didn't rain for one week.
Salt bush and rouged mats of beaded glasswort carpeted the shore line around the inlet with some remnant areas of sandy banksia and grass tree country. Amongst the farmland pockets of stringybark and peppermint forests remained. Climbing higher, gullies of wet forest endured, until one reaches the tall forest of the steep upper catchments where lyrebirds flounced their tails and pealed their songs, where giant mountain ash hollowed amongst rainforest of ancient multi-boled myrtle beech and tree ferns.
After more rounds of intense weeding, the idea of a bush garden sounded appealing. Some farmers were revegetating steeper slopes and fencing off creeks. Away from the weedy road edges, the forest appeared to resist weeds. The leaf litter and ground covers looked like a well tended garden. We already had a grove of sweet pittosporums, the huge tree fern and its descendants. We didn't remove any of the original garden trees, but as we combated blackberries and thistles inclined towards filling the gaps with common South Gippsland species: blackwoods, silver wattles, hazel pomaderris and swamp paperbark.
Friends lived in a mud brick house in the forest in the headwaters of our creek. One steep embankment to the north of the house was kept clear to let in some light. In winter I dug out seedlings, ferns and ground covers from the slippery embankment using a ladder, and narrow terraces for a toehold. From here came hop goodenia, Christmas bush, bootlace bush, austral mulberry, scented paperbark, tender brake, starwort, cotula, flax lily and musk daisy-bush, a beautiful tree with textured bark and silvery under leaves. A few mothershield ferns were transplanted - a fem that obligingly creates baby ferns at the tips of its fronds and some shade nettle-the one that doesn't sting like a hundred bees. Mountain ash and mountain grey gums joined other eucalypts in the road reserve, renamed 'Koala Par after being woken up- by our first koala visitor, loudly grunting and bellowing in the middle of the night. After extricating little plants, driving them home, weeding a spot, digging holes, planting them into the dusk and watering them in with a bucket, I would sit in the garden, with a tired back, dirty fingernails, covered with leaves and mud with foliage tangled in my hair – the results of a part-time obsession.
A local environmental tragedy unfolded in the 1990s. About nineteen percent of the original Great Forest of Gippsland remained in the Strzelecki Ranges. The western range had been heavily cleared, though some small areas of significant forest remained. However, a large consolidated area ran through the eastern ranges, one of the last areas to be settled in South Gippsland. The steep, heavily forested upper catchments proved difficult and much of the area was not taken up, and many potential settlers left their selections, the small clearings returning to forest and the crown. From the 1930s, further farms became unviable. In the northern ranges Australian Paper Mills purchased properties for plantation use; in South Gippsland, the State acquired 28,000 hectares containing a mix of old growth and regrowth forest, cleared and partially cleared land. Often the Forests Commission planted pines on this purchased land. These areas along with 31,000 hectares of forested crown land which wasn't leased otpurchased at all is known as the Strzelecki State Forest. Despite forestry dominating the northern slopes where Australian Paper Mills and their descendent companies held sway, the public Strzelecki State Forest, mainly on the southern fall also provided pine and hardwood timber.
The Victorian Plantations Corporation, a state owned enterprise, was formed by the Kennett government in 1993. Initially, the State's pinus radiata plantations were vested in the state owned enterprise in preparation for full privatisation. One would think that in the late twentieth century enlightened ideas would protect the remaining public forest. It seemed not. Without local consultation, 27,000 hectares of native forest of the Strzelecki State Forest was included in the vested lands. In 1997 when some locals found the Gunyah forest heavily logged, the jig was up. The coupes spread out along the Toora Gunyah Road, through a site of botanical significance - a mixture of Old Growth, regrowth from a 1914 fire and rainforest thinly disguised by a strip of forest along the road reserve. After witnessing the disturbing mess of mud and smoldering debris amidst stumps of huge Mountain Ash and Myrtle Beech, Kim and I joined many others opposing the forest sell-off.
The government push to privatise the forest coincided with the Gippsland Regional Forest Agreement process, which began in 1998. Touted as a way forward for both industry and conservation, stakeholders were encouraged to participate. Engaging meant reading the forest in the terminology of foresters, scientists and bureaucrats, attending meetings, writing submissions. The heads of participants filled with acronyms -OFAs, RFAs, CARs, EVCs and the JANIS reserve criteria (meaning -Deferred Forest Areas, Regional Forest Agreements, Ecological Vegetation Classes, Comprehensive, Adequate and Representative reserve systems, and the very long Joint Australian and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council / Ministerial Council on Forestry, Fisheries and Aquaculture National Forest Policy Statement Implementation Sub committee). One ground rule was that the Agreements required the government to reserve at least fifteen percent of native forest types in a bioregion. The Strzelecki bioregion had less than two percent in reserve, such a low figure that it seemed hopeful to achieve an improvement.
There was significant opposition to the privatisation of the Strzelecki State Forest throughout South Gippsland, the Strzelecki Ranges, Latrobe Valley and other parts of Victoria. A petition of over 7,000 signatures for the creation of a large national park was tabled in the Victorian Parliament, demonstrations were held, submissions made through the RFA process. Pre-empting the outcomes of the Gippsland RFA and side stepping an active GunaiKurnai native title claim over the area, the Government insisted on including non-pine areas of the Strzeleckis in the sale of timber rights. In 1998 Hancock Victorian Plantations bought the assets of the VPC which included 7,000 hectares of eucalypt 'plantation' and management of a further 20,000 of native forest in the Strzelecki State Forest. The 7,000 hectares of eucalypt 'plantation' turned out to be a con. Native forest logging coupes of the previous fifty years, were relabelled plantation and given over to industrial logging. Even the site of botanical significance, logged just prior to the sell-off was coloured in as plantation. This was a flagrant disregard of the convention that when a native forest is logged, it must be regenerated as native forest. The privatisation had further consequences. Areas leased to Hancocks were exempt from consideration of further reservation by the RFA process. Instead of a large increase in reservation, the bioregion was left with less than 2% in reserve and the local community was alienated from this large remaining continuous tract of the Great Forest of Gippsland stretching from north of Foster to north of Yarram. I still can't believe this was allowed to happen.
Some times I visited the forest, diving off the side into a gully brimming with chlorophyll. Touched bark-smooth, knobby, fibrous; leaves-furry, prickly, serrated. Curled up in the buttressed chapel of a hollowed ash, funnelling sunlight. In the forest a fem sprouted from a tree; a tree from a fem. Under layers of leaves small beings transmuted the minty, musky breath of trees. Bathed in woody light, I would attempt to disown language and recall a different reality for a time.
Another therapy was tending the garden, looking after the little bit, over which for a time one has some influence. The botanical reports prepared for the RFA revealed that the Strzelecki Ranges was home to two types of rainforest. Cool temperate rainforest, that wet mossy forest of myrtle beech, sassafras, tree fems and epiphytes like that found at Gunyah and Tarra-Bulga National Park. The other, a warm temperate variety, grew mainly on the lower slopes. Greatly reduced by farming the community was classified as endangered with only eighty-six hectares remaining. Remnant patches of this community can be found throughout the Strzelecki Ranges including stands at Morwell National Park, Agnes River Falls, Deep Creek north of Foster and Hallston Regional Park. Botanist Bill Peel describes the overstorey as dominated by mountain grey gum, southern blue gum, messmate and yellow stringybark with blackwood, austral mulberry and hazel pomaderris acting as canopy trees in disturbed areas. 'In less disturbed sites, Sweet Pittosporum Pittosporum undulatum and Muttonwood Rapanea howittiana are well represented as the primary canopy species'. (ii)
Botanists produced maps of pre-1750 vegetation cover for the RFAs. Remnant vegetation was a guide, but where remnants were minimal and modified expert guesswork based on aspect, altitude and soil types was employed. Maps of course fix and edit a moving reality. Vegetation doesn't stay between the lines, but spreads, contracts, moves about over time. Fire, climatic change, human interference play a part in the drama, as does succession, when one forest type replaces another. The maps and clues in the remnant and regrowth
vegetation in the road reserve and along the creek, 'suggested our surroundings may well have supported a mix of damp forest, wet forest and patches of this warm rainforest. After that I had a name - Strzeleckis Warm Temperate Rainforest - for the suite of plants proliferating between the old pittosporum in the west and the grove in the east- and, oh dear, there was a species list in the back of Bill Peel's book on Victorian rainforests. iii
Kooroman nursery in the western Strzeleckis was nestled in a small area of remnant bush ringing with birdcalls. Arriving with my wish list I'd enquire, 'Have you any Muttonwood?' 'Rapanea howittiana,' Ian would reply, in Latin, as nursery folk do to avoid confusion. Sometimes the Latin was shorthand once the genus was established. 'Do you have any dogwood, I mean cassinias?' Ian: 'Aculeata and trinerva. I would arrive home with trays of tubes: two of each plant like the animals on Noah's ark, hoping for multiplication. Into the mix went mountain correa, prickly Moses, blanket leaf with its furry undersides, prickly currant bush, clematis, tussock grasses, white elderberry and onga yine, a climbing, spreading liana with beautiful bell flowers and a dash of purple inside.
In the initial years of planting we weeded around the seedlings, giving them a head start. The ground layer was always the greatest challenge – layers of newspaper and weed mat succumbed after a while. In places where we persevered we were rewarded with a carpet of ivy-leaf violet, or a mat of forest starwort, sparkling with white star flowers. The elderberries made little creamy berries which as they ripen turn translucent and fall into your hand. The prickly currant bushes made little reddish berries. I grazed on both in late summer. Kangaroo apples self-seeded making a lovely show of purple flowers and elongated fruit. Hop goodenia cuttings flourished making sweet fragrance in the rain and bursting with yellow flowers.
One year the raven brought his fledglings to the birdbath and every year after that the young ones learned how to dunk food in the water, drain it on the side. Other resident birds treated us as part of the furniture. Lewins honeyeaters hung in the fuchsias outside the bedroom window and the grey shrike-thrush with his bright eye and angelic voice was never far away. A pair of scrub wrens moved about the garden all day keeping in contact with their whistles. If the front door was open they hopped in, exploring the house, relaxed, and whistling bell like to one another. More elusive, heard but only occasionally seen, was the handsome golden whistler. Seasonal visitors included flocks of fire-tail finches and New Holland honeyeaters; welcome swallows building their nests under the verandah.
One Autumn Mr. L-- burned off some debris under one of the pine trees. The fire got into the roots and burned for weeks, blackening the trunk and smoking us out. Another time he secretly ringbarked a silver wattle in the garden. He didn't like wattles! Periodically he sprayed the driveway and borders, not overly concerned about drift. Yet, the sweet pittosporum grove continued to flourish. Since that initial insult, he never pointed a finger at the sweet pittosporum in the front garden again. Over the years though, we became aware of an animosity towards the tree – a growing anti-pittosporum vibe in the district. Many locals regarded it as a pest and wouldn't accept that it was an indigenous species. We heard stories of well meaning people cutting down beautiful old trees after being told they were weeds. Sweet pittosporum was definitely in the bad books – poisoned, pulled out and cut down on private and public land.
Botanical guides didn't have a problem with the Pittosporum undulatum. Cochrane and others in Flowers and Plants of Victoria and Tasmania describe the tree as 'indigenous to Gippsland (from Western Port eastwards)' and 'a frequent spreading tree, 6-14 m high, in stream-bank jungles ... ' Leon Costermans concurs on the range. Plant lists from the RFA botanical reports included P. undulatum in wet and damp forest, as well as warm temperate rainforest. However, the brochure Weed Identification published by the Department of Natural Resources & Environment and the Shire of South Gippsland, available through the 1980s and 1990s included P. undulatum as an environmental weed. The Morwell National Park Management Plan (1998) recognized sweet pittosporum as a key host to the rare butterfly orchid, Victoria's only known epiphytic orchid'; yet also referred to it as a pest. Compiling many conflicting reports we published a discussion paper on the internet- Sweet Pittosporum: a South Gippsland Native mistaken for a weed. We raised the question -why has the sweet Native Daphne of the late 19th century become a feature plant in weed brochures, a target for eradication in the late 20th century? Somehow Pittosporum undulatum had achieved a reputation as a weed in the very district where it was not only indigenous in both wet and damp forest, but the primary canopy species of an endangered rainforest community.
There were sweet pittosporum supporters about, often quiet until they recognised a fellow fan. A local nursery man was more vocal, periodically writing to the local papers pleading to stop the war against one of South Gippsland's prominent indigenous native plants and concentrate on the exotic weeds. A local Country Fire Authority identity admitted he had planted a whole forest of them on his farm. He also informed me about a grove of very old pittosporum not far from our place that he had visited with his young children years ago.
Armed one day with measuring tape and camera I set out through the paddocks. The countryside lacks the bridle and walking paths of Britain with their stiles and a sense of common ownership of the landscape. Very pedestrian unfriendly, one has to shimmy under barbed wire, find comer posts and negotiate electrified wires. I found the spot. Sadly some had disappeared (they were in the middle of a cow paddock), one very large individual was half dead, but the biggest was alive. Its trunk was hard and weathered and peering in through a hole I discovered it was hollowed. The trunk measured ten feet in circumference at waist height. I sent botanist Bill Peel the images, who replied, 'What a ripper!...It is certainly the biggest in girth that I have seen ... ' This old grove's presence in the landscape added further evidence to the likelihood of Warm Temperate Rainforest in the near vicinity and it seemed obvious that the pittosporums i'n the garden and the road reserve were descendants of these very trees. I took photographs of the old ones, worried that when they disappear, their existence would be forgotten.
The West Gippsland Catchment Authority undertook a review of the noxious weeds list in 2006 resulting in the removal of Pittosporum undulatum from the list. It was deemed that as sweet pittosporum is indigenous to Victoria it couldn't be listed as a noxious weed under the Catchment and Land Protection Act 1994.
In 2009, after reading our discussion paper, Terry Barrat made contact. Terry, a former manager in the NSW National Parks Service, was upset at the actions of the Shoalhaven Council, which had placed P. undulatum on the noxious weeds list and was mounting eradication programs.
The following year, Terry circulated his paper, 'A Review of the Pittosporum undulatum Literature in relation to its Presumed Status as an Invasive Weed'. Prepared for the Bomaderry Creek Landcare/Bushcare Group, the paper probed the origins of the Sweet Pittosporum's bad press.
The paper agreed with previous botanists on the original extent of Pittosporum undulatum - from Westernport Bay up the east coast to Bundaberg, with an outlying population at Carnarvon Gorge. He acknowledged that the species has spread beyond its range, largely through garden plantings around Melbourne into central and western Victoria and other parts of Australia.
Barratt, however, found deficiencies in the scientific research when it came to studies of P. undulatum in its natural range. He argued that findings based on the spread and control of sweet pittosporum outside of its natural range had been used to 'promote the erroneous view of weediness...within its natural range.' " He criticised some botanists for calling it an exotic and promulgating strongly negative opinions about the plant. In the light of lack of evidence and research he found this irresponsible.
It is likely in response to these negative views that the plant landed in weed brochures within the plant's range, causing harm on the ground as well-meaning bush workers and volunteers responded to the message that the tree was a weed. Letters to the Editor in local papers continue to this day to both disparage and support Pittosporum undulatum. Removed from the 'list' it may be, but once a plant is branded as a weed, entrenched negative attitudes take a long while to shift.
There are signs that Strzeleckis Warm Temperate Rainforest is being both applauded and recognised in recent years. In 2014, the Latrobe Valley Naturalist reported an excursion to the Uralla reserve near Trafalgar, listing the species in a remnant patch and lamenting that it was the most depleted ecological vegetation class in the Strzelecki Ranges. v On October 23, 2014, Strzeleckis Warm Temperate Rainforest was formally listed as a threatened community under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act. Terry Barrett wrote that, 'looked at in a positive light in terms of the potential expansion of rainforest, we may even be able to rejoice in the proliferation of P. undulatum. vi Perhaps that perceptual shift is underway.
Places seep into you. Over twenty years, we had seen the garden blanketed with snow, the tree fems laden with it. Borne searing days with the scent of bushfire in the air – the birdbath nimbed by bees. Awoken to magpies, full moonstruck, warbling in the night. Endured long, wet winters with horizontal rain and howling winds, the garden sprouting with yabby towers. Outside at night we marvelled at the stars and constellations, the wheeling Milky Way. In pitch black we walked the track to the road, barefoot in summer, carefully over the stones in places, sensing the shapes of the cool, coiled spongy leaves from the Norfolk pines where the track curved.
Watched a garden grow into a forest. Towards the end of winter, first the silver wattles, then the Blackwoods gilded the garden. Slanting winter sun lighting drifting saffron veils. Mothershield ferns spread under the canopy. Mountain correas six feet tall produced delicate soft green bells in winter. The eucalypts in Koala Park quickly surpassed the old cypress and pines of the original homestead in height, albeit slender. They had hundreds of years to fatten up, and perhaps lose their tops to lightening and form hollows for owls, possums and gliders.
The trunks of the original pittosporum grove gradually buttressed and the thickened stems of lianas swung through the canopy. In spring the leaves appeared two-toned as a flush of light green growth emerged. In the shade the foliage appeared daubed with a painter's light, in the sunlight the new growth fired a radiant aura. Accompanying the sweet clusters of pittosporum flowers, the white sprays of the clematis and the cream bell-shaped wonga flowers tinged with magenta draped over some of the trees like a bri'dal veil.
The property was sold after Mr. L - died. Shock was followed by a deep sadness at our impending departure. Later, the search for a new place, a moving on – but that's another story. The garden was left to fate, the plans of others and the vagaries of nature. After we left I missed the honeyed night air when the pittosporums flowered. I missed the raven – picturing him high in the Norfolk pine, holding vigil, scanning the garden I no longer saw. Now, I like to imagine plants, self-seeding, spreading. A corridor of vegetation advancing along the creek. Lyrebirds returning, raking through leaf litter. Perhaps one day a butterfly orchid fastening itself to a lichened limb, trailing a spray of delicate flowers.
'No way,’ I thought. Thankful that he hadn't spotted the grove beyond the thicket of japonica, where I would sit listening to the whistles and squeaks of little birds and catch the bright streak of a speeding crimson rosella amongst all that green.
The garden, dating from the early 1900s had been planned on a moderately grand scale on a couple of acres. The plantings were an eclectic mix of European, South American and Asian species - old roses, a grove of datura, an Irish strawberry, japonica, beech, a huge Magnolia grandifolia, rhododendrons and birch trees. To the north east behind the house was a very neglected orchard, the pear trees too tall to mention and a feast for possums and flocks of young ravens each Autumn. Beyond that on the periphery of the garden, a huge Norfolk pine, some old, weathered cypresses and original tall blue gums lent a park like appearance. The curious presence of the tallest rough tree fem I have ever seen encouraged one to imagine what might have been. A survivor of the land clearing, it towered over the house more than twenty-five feet high. Over the following years, descendants of this giant seeded on the eastern side of the house, one uncomfortably close to the guest bedroom window. We left it and as it grew it pressed its fronds up against the window, until eventually it passed the gutter and spread umbrella-like.
A row of towering pine trees intimidated the house on the southern side. This was a familiar sight in South Gippsland, where it had been customary to plant a row of pines after clearing the land. Eighty, a hundred years later, they had grown old, gnarled and misshapen by the elements. Some formed grotesqueries in the landscape, louring over little farmhouses on bare hills. One night in a storm, a big one fell, groaning and crashing shaking the house and narrowly missing the car. The black cockatoos loved the cones, arriving in large flocks hooning around, cracking seeds, and occasionally dropping a whole cone with a loud bang on the shed roof.
We resurrected the old concrete birdbath and sat at the table mesmerised by fantails, superb fairy-wrens and thornbills diving in the water and sitting on the edge fluffed out to dry. Early on the ravens warily raided the compost. Over time the male became more relaxed, collecting mice I left on the fence post. As well as the long melancholy caw, he would emit a low cough when close by. I believe he was subtly announcing his presence and he would wait while I fetched a morsel. At the birdbath he would dunk a piece of bread briefly, lift and drain it on the side, delicately turning it once. He collected offerings and hid them under leaf litter for later. I worried he was too friendly and could get into trouble, but he was smart. In one of those slow country afternoon chats from his tractor, Mr. L - divulged that whenever he had a gun under arm, the ravens disappeared quick smart. I kept my liaisons to myself.
While I have a preference for wild and informal gardens and tangled thickets offer places for birds to feed and nest, this garden had really gone to seed - weed seeds that is. The presence of the older trees lent a dignified look, if you squinted and ignored what was going on at ground level and in the gaps. Surrounded by farmland, the garden was constantly being inundated with paddock grasses, those fertilised weeds farmers call pasture. The bulb and flower beds were growing hay. Tufted grasses could grow four feet in a week and
kikuyu grass stealthily crept underground knitting itself with the roots of anything else living there. In addition, thistles grew taller than me, periwinkle carpeted the ground and climbed the water tank and blackberries had run amok forming walls of prickly resistance.
Kim cleared walkways with clippers, scythe and saw. My first attempts at gardening were unfocused – frenzied weeding bouts dealing with an earlier design gone awry. Giant piles of weeds rotted while the beds grew them back again. The kikuyu grass was a physical challenge with its long matted root system. Heaving and cursing in a fierce tug of war, I was often the loser, falling backwards onto the ground. For years clipping back blackberries and digging out their roots I was nagged by a sense of existential terror at the magnitude and vigour of this plant. No matter how careful one is, cruel thorns removed your beanie, snagged your hair, scratched your arms and legs.
A walk through the paddocks to the east took one to a high ridge, from which the garden pronounced itself a bushy refuge in a vast grassland. A few remnant blue gums prqvided a tenuous link between the garden and the creek at the bottom of the hill. Along the creek a line of huge spreading mountain ash dominated the skyline. As the crow flies, the headwaters began a few kilometres away. Down the hill, the small townships of Foster, Toora and Welshpool lie on the plains around Comer Inlet.
Comer Inlet is embraced by the eastern Strzelecki Range in the north; the Hoddle Range to the west. The mountains of Wilsons Promontory, sometimes visible, often shrouded in sea fog rise across the water to the south. This is the country of the Brataualung, a clan of the Gunai-Kumai people, who have inhabited Gippsland for thousands of years. Their long custodianship over this country was severely disrupted by European occupation. Sealing and whaling was followed by a brief gold rush in the 1870s and the development of farming communities.
A hundred years of European agriculture certainly transformed the landscape. Sea walls and drained swamps diminished wetlands; large scale clearing resulted in massive sedimentation of the inlet. Largely a forested landscape, lack of grasslands meant the introduction of exotic grasses, such as clover and rye, making those hill and plains luminous green for much of the year. The area is part of the fertile crescent which runs down the eastern side of Australia – farmers don't need to irrigate here. We found the winters long and wet; gumboots or 'Gippsland slippers' a necessity, despite records showing a steady decline in rainfall. Accustomed to the high rainfall, farmers here complained when it didn't rain for one week.
Salt bush and rouged mats of beaded glasswort carpeted the shore line around the inlet with some remnant areas of sandy banksia and grass tree country. Amongst the farmland pockets of stringybark and peppermint forests remained. Climbing higher, gullies of wet forest endured, until one reaches the tall forest of the steep upper catchments where lyrebirds flounced their tails and pealed their songs, where giant mountain ash hollowed amongst rainforest of ancient multi-boled myrtle beech and tree ferns.
After more rounds of intense weeding, the idea of a bush garden sounded appealing. Some farmers were revegetating steeper slopes and fencing off creeks. Away from the weedy road edges, the forest appeared to resist weeds. The leaf litter and ground covers looked like a well tended garden. We already had a grove of sweet pittosporums, the huge tree fern and its descendants. We didn't remove any of the original garden trees, but as we combated blackberries and thistles inclined towards filling the gaps with common South Gippsland species: blackwoods, silver wattles, hazel pomaderris and swamp paperbark.
Friends lived in a mud brick house in the forest in the headwaters of our creek. One steep embankment to the north of the house was kept clear to let in some light. In winter I dug out seedlings, ferns and ground covers from the slippery embankment using a ladder, and narrow terraces for a toehold. From here came hop goodenia, Christmas bush, bootlace bush, austral mulberry, scented paperbark, tender brake, starwort, cotula, flax lily and musk daisy-bush, a beautiful tree with textured bark and silvery under leaves. A few mothershield ferns were transplanted - a fem that obligingly creates baby ferns at the tips of its fronds and some shade nettle-the one that doesn't sting like a hundred bees. Mountain ash and mountain grey gums joined other eucalypts in the road reserve, renamed 'Koala Par after being woken up- by our first koala visitor, loudly grunting and bellowing in the middle of the night. After extricating little plants, driving them home, weeding a spot, digging holes, planting them into the dusk and watering them in with a bucket, I would sit in the garden, with a tired back, dirty fingernails, covered with leaves and mud with foliage tangled in my hair – the results of a part-time obsession.
A local environmental tragedy unfolded in the 1990s. About nineteen percent of the original Great Forest of Gippsland remained in the Strzelecki Ranges. The western range had been heavily cleared, though some small areas of significant forest remained. However, a large consolidated area ran through the eastern ranges, one of the last areas to be settled in South Gippsland. The steep, heavily forested upper catchments proved difficult and much of the area was not taken up, and many potential settlers left their selections, the small clearings returning to forest and the crown. From the 1930s, further farms became unviable. In the northern ranges Australian Paper Mills purchased properties for plantation use; in South Gippsland, the State acquired 28,000 hectares containing a mix of old growth and regrowth forest, cleared and partially cleared land. Often the Forests Commission planted pines on this purchased land. These areas along with 31,000 hectares of forested crown land which wasn't leased otpurchased at all is known as the Strzelecki State Forest. Despite forestry dominating the northern slopes where Australian Paper Mills and their descendent companies held sway, the public Strzelecki State Forest, mainly on the southern fall also provided pine and hardwood timber.
The Victorian Plantations Corporation, a state owned enterprise, was formed by the Kennett government in 1993. Initially, the State's pinus radiata plantations were vested in the state owned enterprise in preparation for full privatisation. One would think that in the late twentieth century enlightened ideas would protect the remaining public forest. It seemed not. Without local consultation, 27,000 hectares of native forest of the Strzelecki State Forest was included in the vested lands. In 1997 when some locals found the Gunyah forest heavily logged, the jig was up. The coupes spread out along the Toora Gunyah Road, through a site of botanical significance - a mixture of Old Growth, regrowth from a 1914 fire and rainforest thinly disguised by a strip of forest along the road reserve. After witnessing the disturbing mess of mud and smoldering debris amidst stumps of huge Mountain Ash and Myrtle Beech, Kim and I joined many others opposing the forest sell-off.
The government push to privatise the forest coincided with the Gippsland Regional Forest Agreement process, which began in 1998. Touted as a way forward for both industry and conservation, stakeholders were encouraged to participate. Engaging meant reading the forest in the terminology of foresters, scientists and bureaucrats, attending meetings, writing submissions. The heads of participants filled with acronyms -OFAs, RFAs, CARs, EVCs and the JANIS reserve criteria (meaning -Deferred Forest Areas, Regional Forest Agreements, Ecological Vegetation Classes, Comprehensive, Adequate and Representative reserve systems, and the very long Joint Australian and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council / Ministerial Council on Forestry, Fisheries and Aquaculture National Forest Policy Statement Implementation Sub committee). One ground rule was that the Agreements required the government to reserve at least fifteen percent of native forest types in a bioregion. The Strzelecki bioregion had less than two percent in reserve, such a low figure that it seemed hopeful to achieve an improvement.
There was significant opposition to the privatisation of the Strzelecki State Forest throughout South Gippsland, the Strzelecki Ranges, Latrobe Valley and other parts of Victoria. A petition of over 7,000 signatures for the creation of a large national park was tabled in the Victorian Parliament, demonstrations were held, submissions made through the RFA process. Pre-empting the outcomes of the Gippsland RFA and side stepping an active GunaiKurnai native title claim over the area, the Government insisted on including non-pine areas of the Strzeleckis in the sale of timber rights. In 1998 Hancock Victorian Plantations bought the assets of the VPC which included 7,000 hectares of eucalypt 'plantation' and management of a further 20,000 of native forest in the Strzelecki State Forest. The 7,000 hectares of eucalypt 'plantation' turned out to be a con. Native forest logging coupes of the previous fifty years, were relabelled plantation and given over to industrial logging. Even the site of botanical significance, logged just prior to the sell-off was coloured in as plantation. This was a flagrant disregard of the convention that when a native forest is logged, it must be regenerated as native forest. The privatisation had further consequences. Areas leased to Hancocks were exempt from consideration of further reservation by the RFA process. Instead of a large increase in reservation, the bioregion was left with less than 2% in reserve and the local community was alienated from this large remaining continuous tract of the Great Forest of Gippsland stretching from north of Foster to north of Yarram. I still can't believe this was allowed to happen.
Some times I visited the forest, diving off the side into a gully brimming with chlorophyll. Touched bark-smooth, knobby, fibrous; leaves-furry, prickly, serrated. Curled up in the buttressed chapel of a hollowed ash, funnelling sunlight. In the forest a fem sprouted from a tree; a tree from a fem. Under layers of leaves small beings transmuted the minty, musky breath of trees. Bathed in woody light, I would attempt to disown language and recall a different reality for a time.
Another therapy was tending the garden, looking after the little bit, over which for a time one has some influence. The botanical reports prepared for the RFA revealed that the Strzelecki Ranges was home to two types of rainforest. Cool temperate rainforest, that wet mossy forest of myrtle beech, sassafras, tree fems and epiphytes like that found at Gunyah and Tarra-Bulga National Park. The other, a warm temperate variety, grew mainly on the lower slopes. Greatly reduced by farming the community was classified as endangered with only eighty-six hectares remaining. Remnant patches of this community can be found throughout the Strzelecki Ranges including stands at Morwell National Park, Agnes River Falls, Deep Creek north of Foster and Hallston Regional Park. Botanist Bill Peel describes the overstorey as dominated by mountain grey gum, southern blue gum, messmate and yellow stringybark with blackwood, austral mulberry and hazel pomaderris acting as canopy trees in disturbed areas. 'In less disturbed sites, Sweet Pittosporum Pittosporum undulatum and Muttonwood Rapanea howittiana are well represented as the primary canopy species'. (ii)
Botanists produced maps of pre-1750 vegetation cover for the RFAs. Remnant vegetation was a guide, but where remnants were minimal and modified expert guesswork based on aspect, altitude and soil types was employed. Maps of course fix and edit a moving reality. Vegetation doesn't stay between the lines, but spreads, contracts, moves about over time. Fire, climatic change, human interference play a part in the drama, as does succession, when one forest type replaces another. The maps and clues in the remnant and regrowth
vegetation in the road reserve and along the creek, 'suggested our surroundings may well have supported a mix of damp forest, wet forest and patches of this warm rainforest. After that I had a name - Strzeleckis Warm Temperate Rainforest - for the suite of plants proliferating between the old pittosporum in the west and the grove in the east- and, oh dear, there was a species list in the back of Bill Peel's book on Victorian rainforests. iii
Kooroman nursery in the western Strzeleckis was nestled in a small area of remnant bush ringing with birdcalls. Arriving with my wish list I'd enquire, 'Have you any Muttonwood?' 'Rapanea howittiana,' Ian would reply, in Latin, as nursery folk do to avoid confusion. Sometimes the Latin was shorthand once the genus was established. 'Do you have any dogwood, I mean cassinias?' Ian: 'Aculeata and trinerva. I would arrive home with trays of tubes: two of each plant like the animals on Noah's ark, hoping for multiplication. Into the mix went mountain correa, prickly Moses, blanket leaf with its furry undersides, prickly currant bush, clematis, tussock grasses, white elderberry and onga yine, a climbing, spreading liana with beautiful bell flowers and a dash of purple inside.
In the initial years of planting we weeded around the seedlings, giving them a head start. The ground layer was always the greatest challenge – layers of newspaper and weed mat succumbed after a while. In places where we persevered we were rewarded with a carpet of ivy-leaf violet, or a mat of forest starwort, sparkling with white star flowers. The elderberries made little creamy berries which as they ripen turn translucent and fall into your hand. The prickly currant bushes made little reddish berries. I grazed on both in late summer. Kangaroo apples self-seeded making a lovely show of purple flowers and elongated fruit. Hop goodenia cuttings flourished making sweet fragrance in the rain and bursting with yellow flowers.
One year the raven brought his fledglings to the birdbath and every year after that the young ones learned how to dunk food in the water, drain it on the side. Other resident birds treated us as part of the furniture. Lewins honeyeaters hung in the fuchsias outside the bedroom window and the grey shrike-thrush with his bright eye and angelic voice was never far away. A pair of scrub wrens moved about the garden all day keeping in contact with their whistles. If the front door was open they hopped in, exploring the house, relaxed, and whistling bell like to one another. More elusive, heard but only occasionally seen, was the handsome golden whistler. Seasonal visitors included flocks of fire-tail finches and New Holland honeyeaters; welcome swallows building their nests under the verandah.
One Autumn Mr. L-- burned off some debris under one of the pine trees. The fire got into the roots and burned for weeks, blackening the trunk and smoking us out. Another time he secretly ringbarked a silver wattle in the garden. He didn't like wattles! Periodically he sprayed the driveway and borders, not overly concerned about drift. Yet, the sweet pittosporum grove continued to flourish. Since that initial insult, he never pointed a finger at the sweet pittosporum in the front garden again. Over the years though, we became aware of an animosity towards the tree – a growing anti-pittosporum vibe in the district. Many locals regarded it as a pest and wouldn't accept that it was an indigenous species. We heard stories of well meaning people cutting down beautiful old trees after being told they were weeds. Sweet pittosporum was definitely in the bad books – poisoned, pulled out and cut down on private and public land.
Botanical guides didn't have a problem with the Pittosporum undulatum. Cochrane and others in Flowers and Plants of Victoria and Tasmania describe the tree as 'indigenous to Gippsland (from Western Port eastwards)' and 'a frequent spreading tree, 6-14 m high, in stream-bank jungles ... ' Leon Costermans concurs on the range. Plant lists from the RFA botanical reports included P. undulatum in wet and damp forest, as well as warm temperate rainforest. However, the brochure Weed Identification published by the Department of Natural Resources & Environment and the Shire of South Gippsland, available through the 1980s and 1990s included P. undulatum as an environmental weed. The Morwell National Park Management Plan (1998) recognized sweet pittosporum as a key host to the rare butterfly orchid, Victoria's only known epiphytic orchid'; yet also referred to it as a pest. Compiling many conflicting reports we published a discussion paper on the internet- Sweet Pittosporum: a South Gippsland Native mistaken for a weed. We raised the question -why has the sweet Native Daphne of the late 19th century become a feature plant in weed brochures, a target for eradication in the late 20th century? Somehow Pittosporum undulatum had achieved a reputation as a weed in the very district where it was not only indigenous in both wet and damp forest, but the primary canopy species of an endangered rainforest community.
There were sweet pittosporum supporters about, often quiet until they recognised a fellow fan. A local nursery man was more vocal, periodically writing to the local papers pleading to stop the war against one of South Gippsland's prominent indigenous native plants and concentrate on the exotic weeds. A local Country Fire Authority identity admitted he had planted a whole forest of them on his farm. He also informed me about a grove of very old pittosporum not far from our place that he had visited with his young children years ago.
Armed one day with measuring tape and camera I set out through the paddocks. The countryside lacks the bridle and walking paths of Britain with their stiles and a sense of common ownership of the landscape. Very pedestrian unfriendly, one has to shimmy under barbed wire, find comer posts and negotiate electrified wires. I found the spot. Sadly some had disappeared (they were in the middle of a cow paddock), one very large individual was half dead, but the biggest was alive. Its trunk was hard and weathered and peering in through a hole I discovered it was hollowed. The trunk measured ten feet in circumference at waist height. I sent botanist Bill Peel the images, who replied, 'What a ripper!...It is certainly the biggest in girth that I have seen ... ' This old grove's presence in the landscape added further evidence to the likelihood of Warm Temperate Rainforest in the near vicinity and it seemed obvious that the pittosporums i'n the garden and the road reserve were descendants of these very trees. I took photographs of the old ones, worried that when they disappear, their existence would be forgotten.
The West Gippsland Catchment Authority undertook a review of the noxious weeds list in 2006 resulting in the removal of Pittosporum undulatum from the list. It was deemed that as sweet pittosporum is indigenous to Victoria it couldn't be listed as a noxious weed under the Catchment and Land Protection Act 1994.
In 2009, after reading our discussion paper, Terry Barrat made contact. Terry, a former manager in the NSW National Parks Service, was upset at the actions of the Shoalhaven Council, which had placed P. undulatum on the noxious weeds list and was mounting eradication programs.
The following year, Terry circulated his paper, 'A Review of the Pittosporum undulatum Literature in relation to its Presumed Status as an Invasive Weed'. Prepared for the Bomaderry Creek Landcare/Bushcare Group, the paper probed the origins of the Sweet Pittosporum's bad press.
The paper agreed with previous botanists on the original extent of Pittosporum undulatum - from Westernport Bay up the east coast to Bundaberg, with an outlying population at Carnarvon Gorge. He acknowledged that the species has spread beyond its range, largely through garden plantings around Melbourne into central and western Victoria and other parts of Australia.
Barratt, however, found deficiencies in the scientific research when it came to studies of P. undulatum in its natural range. He argued that findings based on the spread and control of sweet pittosporum outside of its natural range had been used to 'promote the erroneous view of weediness...within its natural range.' " He criticised some botanists for calling it an exotic and promulgating strongly negative opinions about the plant. In the light of lack of evidence and research he found this irresponsible.
It is likely in response to these negative views that the plant landed in weed brochures within the plant's range, causing harm on the ground as well-meaning bush workers and volunteers responded to the message that the tree was a weed. Letters to the Editor in local papers continue to this day to both disparage and support Pittosporum undulatum. Removed from the 'list' it may be, but once a plant is branded as a weed, entrenched negative attitudes take a long while to shift.
There are signs that Strzeleckis Warm Temperate Rainforest is being both applauded and recognised in recent years. In 2014, the Latrobe Valley Naturalist reported an excursion to the Uralla reserve near Trafalgar, listing the species in a remnant patch and lamenting that it was the most depleted ecological vegetation class in the Strzelecki Ranges. v On October 23, 2014, Strzeleckis Warm Temperate Rainforest was formally listed as a threatened community under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act. Terry Barrett wrote that, 'looked at in a positive light in terms of the potential expansion of rainforest, we may even be able to rejoice in the proliferation of P. undulatum. vi Perhaps that perceptual shift is underway.
Places seep into you. Over twenty years, we had seen the garden blanketed with snow, the tree fems laden with it. Borne searing days with the scent of bushfire in the air – the birdbath nimbed by bees. Awoken to magpies, full moonstruck, warbling in the night. Endured long, wet winters with horizontal rain and howling winds, the garden sprouting with yabby towers. Outside at night we marvelled at the stars and constellations, the wheeling Milky Way. In pitch black we walked the track to the road, barefoot in summer, carefully over the stones in places, sensing the shapes of the cool, coiled spongy leaves from the Norfolk pines where the track curved.
Watched a garden grow into a forest. Towards the end of winter, first the silver wattles, then the Blackwoods gilded the garden. Slanting winter sun lighting drifting saffron veils. Mothershield ferns spread under the canopy. Mountain correas six feet tall produced delicate soft green bells in winter. The eucalypts in Koala Park quickly surpassed the old cypress and pines of the original homestead in height, albeit slender. They had hundreds of years to fatten up, and perhaps lose their tops to lightening and form hollows for owls, possums and gliders.
The trunks of the original pittosporum grove gradually buttressed and the thickened stems of lianas swung through the canopy. In spring the leaves appeared two-toned as a flush of light green growth emerged. In the shade the foliage appeared daubed with a painter's light, in the sunlight the new growth fired a radiant aura. Accompanying the sweet clusters of pittosporum flowers, the white sprays of the clematis and the cream bell-shaped wonga flowers tinged with magenta draped over some of the trees like a bri'dal veil.
The property was sold after Mr. L - died. Shock was followed by a deep sadness at our impending departure. Later, the search for a new place, a moving on – but that's another story. The garden was left to fate, the plans of others and the vagaries of nature. After we left I missed the honeyed night air when the pittosporums flowered. I missed the raven – picturing him high in the Norfolk pine, holding vigil, scanning the garden I no longer saw. Now, I like to imagine plants, self-seeding, spreading. A corridor of vegetation advancing along the creek. Lyrebirds returning, raking through leaf litter. Perhaps one day a butterfly orchid fastening itself to a lichened limb, trailing a spray of delicate flowers.
*****
APPENDIX
A list of the indigenous species mentioned for those who like to greet their species formally.
A list of the indigenous species mentioned for those who like to greet their species formally.
| Austral mulberry Beaded glasswort Blanket leaf Blackwood Blue gum Bootlace bush Butterfly orchid Coast salt bush Cotula Christmas bush Common tussock grass Dogwood or cassinia Forest clematis Forest starwort Grey tussock grass Hazel pomaderris Hop goodenia Ivy-leaf violet Kangaroo apple Mothershield fern Mountain ash Mountain correa Mountain grey gum Musk daisy-bush Muttonwood Myrtle beech Norfolk pine Prickly currant bush Prickly Moses Rough tree fern Southern sassafras Scented paperbark Shade nettle Silver wattle Swamp paperbark Sweet pittosporum Tasman flax lily Tender brake (fern) White elderberry Wonga vine | Hedycarya angustifolia Sarcocornia quinquejlora Bedfordia aborescens Acacia melanoxylon E. globulus ssp. globulus Pimelea axiflora Sarcochilus australis Atriplex cinerea Cotula australis Prostanthera lasianthos Poa labillardieri Cassinia Aculeata/Cassinia trinerva Clematis glycinoides Stellaria flaccida Poa sieberiana Pomaderris aspera Goodenia ovata Viola hederacea ssp. Hederacea Solanum aviculare Polystichum proliferum Eucalyptus regnans Correa lawrenciana Eucalyptus cypellocarpa Olearia argophylla Rapanea howittiana Nothofagus cunninghamii Araucaria heterophylla Copromosa quadrifida Acacia verticillata Cyathea australis Atherosperma moschatum Melaleuca squarrosa Australina pusilla Acacia dealbata Melaleuca ericfolia Pittosporum undulatum Dianella tasmanica Pteris tremula Sambucus gaudichaudiana Pandorea pandorana |
References
i. From Elms AW et al. 1920, 1998. Land of the Lyrebird A story of early settlement in the Great Forest of SouthGippsland, Korumburra & District Historical Society. {p. 279 in 1998 version}
ii Peel, B (1999) Rainforests & Cool Temperate Mixed Forests of Victoria. NRE, 1999. p.100
iii Peel, B (1999) ibid Appendix 4,A34-35.
iv Barratt, Terry (2010) 'A Review of the Pittosporum undulatum Literature in relation to its Presumed Status as an Invasive Weed',
NSW. page 3.
vi. Barratt, Terry (2010) op cit.p. 22
Julie Constable moved from Melbourne to South Gippsland in the 1980 s and has lived in the Strzelecki Ranges and around Corner Inlet ever since. She taught in Gippsland secondary schools for 12 years before joining the West Gippsland Library Corporation in 1993. For many years, she drove the mobile library.
Writing has always been part of her life – journal writing, fiction, poetry. In the late 1990s she and her partner began campaigning to stop the privatisation of the Strzelecki State Forest. This was a period of historical research, writing submissions, proposals, press releases and letters — a tumultuous period but one which reawakened her love of history and non-fiction prose.
Writing has always been part of her life – journal writing, fiction, poetry. In the late 1990s she and her partner began campaigning to stop the privatisation of the Strzelecki State Forest. This was a period of historical research, writing submissions, proposals, press releases and letters — a tumultuous period but one which reawakened her love of history and non-fiction prose.