By Catherine Watson

MORE than 250 people braved strong easterly winds on the Inverloch surf beach on Wednesday to call for urgent action to save the disappearing sand dunes.  

​They formed a line marking out where the dune face was in 2012 – now 70 metres out to sea – providing a graphic illustration of the rapid retreat of the dunes over the past 10 years.​

​Local filmmakers Terry Melvin and Laura Brearley have done it again with their beautiful new film Walking in the Woodlands.

The film features interviews with walkers in the Western Port woodlands. Ed Thexton, president of the South Gippsland Conservation Society, movingly describes them as a rare example of a lost world that is never coming back.
 
“It’s a reminder, as you pass through it, of the wonder that must have gripped those first Europeans. The woodland is a beautiful place to be. The visual aspects makes it really accessible to a lot of people because you can see so far through the open spaced trees.
 
“The really great thing – it’s still got goannas, it’s still got bandicoots. Here it is - lumps of land that still has the faunal population. It’s almost unheard of.”

By Catherine Watson
 
SOUTH Australia’s Cape Barren geese population has taken a dive, raising fears for the long-term survival of the threatened species.
 
A 30 per cent decline  since 2001 is thought to be linked to the recent bushfires on Kangaroo Island and a decline in dairy farming in the Lower Lakes area.
 
After being hunted almost to the point of extinction in the 1950s, the geese are now listed as vulnerable nationally and rare in South Australia.
 
If South Australia’s Cape Barren geese numbers are declining, perhaps they’ve joined the exodus to Phillip Island, where the geese flock is thriving.  ​

​By Catherine Watson
 
IT ALL started with a mud map.
 
Dave Sutton, Inverloch resident and long-time president of the South Gippsland Conservation Society, remembers being invited round to Danny Drummond’s place to discuss a cycling and walking trail that would connect Wonthaggi and Inverloch.
 
“It was the days before online mapping and Danny, who worked for Parks Victoria, had drawn a mud map showing a route along unused road reserves.”
 
That was 15 or 20 years ago. And while almost everyone liked the idea, for a long time it looked as though the trail was going nowhere.

​But suddenly it’s a real thing, or almost. Last week Bass Coast councillors voted unanimously to proceed with the trail.

By Neil Daly

TWO important documents are floating around Western Port at present: Victoria’s  Draft Marine and Coastal Strategy (Department of Environment, Land , Water and Planning, July 2021) and the Draft Port Phillip & Western Port Regional Catchment Strategy (Port Phillip & Westernport Catchment Management Authority, July 2021).

Also circulating is a document I’ve written called Western Port Strategic Management Plan – Starter Kit (August 2021).  I have sent a copy of this document to the MPs on my list and to the new alliance made up of key Western Port community stakeholders now convened by the Victorian National Parks Association. 

The ‘alliance’ has tabled it along with a number of plans and suggestions as to how the Victorian community can safeguard the future of Western Port and its region from the ongoing threat of urbanisation and industries that may damage its environment. The group is formulating its position and will have more to say soon.

By Catherine Watson
 
SOME rare and threatened species are cute. Think southern brown bandicoots. Others, such as powerful owls, are impressive. Then there are the others that only a scientist could love. The tea tree fingers fungus is one of those rare species.
 
And Dr Sapphire McMullan-Fisher is one of those scientists. She has dedicated her career to something that very people know about, or could possibly care about if they did.
 
The indifference is no mystery to her.  “It’s literally brown bumps on top of brown bark, smaller than a 50 cent piece,” she says, and laughs.  ​

By Dick Wettenhall
 
A SEMINAL moment for me was the discovery of spectacular Donkey Orchids growing in virtual sand south of Kalgoorlie. With no water in sight, I wondered how these delicate plants survived. 
 
I am reminded of this when driving past the sand mine-scarred bushlands along Western Port’s shoreline stretching from Lang Lang to Glen Forbes. Disturbingly, this is one of Bass Coast’s few remaining areas of remnant bushland, and home for some of Victoria’s rarest orchids.     
 
The survival of these orchids, as with Kalgoorlie’s Donkey Orchids, is the product of millions of years of evolutionary adaptation to the extraordinarily intricate underground ecology of dry nutrient-poor soils. Tragically, it only takes seconds for sand mining bulldozers and excavators to irreversibly destroy these remarkable ecosystems. ​

By Neil Daly

​THE Andrews Labor Government can settle into the parliamentary winter recess well pleased with its efforts: the AGL/APA gas import terminal at Crib Point battle is done and dusted; and its answer to a question about a Western Port Strategic Management Plan (WPSMP) now closes the matter … or does it?

In the Legislative Council on February 18 this year, Clifford Hayes of the Sustainable Australia Party, asked Environment Minister Lily D’Ambrosio to initiate a strategic management plan for Western Port. (See Some have heard the call, Bass Coast Post, March 25, 2021.)