Ayr Creek, Inverloch. Photos: Ed Thexton By Ed Thexton
I’M A country kid whose youth was spent on the Woori Yallock Creek at Yellingbo that is the last holdout of the helmeted honeyeater. Little did I know my local creek was a rare exception, its floral and faunal riches absent from most creeks of agricultural Victoria.
By chance I now find myself in Inverloch on the Ayr Creek. More a much-altered drainage line than creek really. But no matter how humble, it’s our creek. Thirty minutes ago I was in it, pulling out weeds and contemplating this writing. I’m 65 this birthday so the flower of youth is wilted, helped no doubt by the bee that thought fit to sacrifice its life for the benefit of my skull. I mused over what the hell I was doing with my holed gumboot in the effluent of Inverloch.
I’M A country kid whose youth was spent on the Woori Yallock Creek at Yellingbo that is the last holdout of the helmeted honeyeater. Little did I know my local creek was a rare exception, its floral and faunal riches absent from most creeks of agricultural Victoria.
By chance I now find myself in Inverloch on the Ayr Creek. More a much-altered drainage line than creek really. But no matter how humble, it’s our creek. Thirty minutes ago I was in it, pulling out weeds and contemplating this writing. I’m 65 this birthday so the flower of youth is wilted, helped no doubt by the bee that thought fit to sacrifice its life for the benefit of my skull. I mused over what the hell I was doing with my holed gumboot in the effluent of Inverloch.
Really, I was gardening. Extracting one plant, in this case wandering trad (formerly known to many of us as wandering Jew), a native of Brazil, to create opportunity for others. I thought of the artificiality of our reductionist approach to education, of how forestry, agriculture and horticulture are siloed when in their true essence they are all just forms of applied interventionist ecology. Creek rehabilitation is interventionist ecology too.
