SPEAKER_01 0:00

I'd like to acknowledge the Wandrew Warong people as the traditional owners of the land where this recording was made. Over the past few months, I've been walking through reserves around Melbourne, NAM, and recording conversations along the way. I've met with traditional owners and First Nations peoples, conservationists, ecologists, and others who've chosen a place that matters to them. We walk and talk about nature, what lives there, what's changed, and what needs protecting. You'll hear our footsteps, the wind in the trees, the birds overhead, and the city not too far away. This is finding Melbourne's nature. If you drive out into the west of Melbourne, you're no doubt going to pass some new housing estates. You'll pass some grasslands too. And if you're lucky, you'll reach some beautiful woodlands. This is an area where so many of the woodlands got cleared on the Victorian Volcanic Plain. There's just a few patches left as remnant. This particular site we're at is extremely significant and it's been cared for by just a few volunteers. One of those volunteers is Daryl Akers, and he's going to tell us all about this place. So we're going to pull up a stump, enjoy a relaxing talk, and hear all about Pinkerton Forest.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

It's a when the reserve was first created, there were just a whole lot of old, very ancient grey box trees that were slowly dying and the forest was disappearing, but then Western water they decided to create a reserve there, and once that happened, grazing was removed. Now the trees are growing back, so you can see plenty of small grey box trees which weren't here originally, it was just the old trees and nothing else, and a forest of box lawns. But the box lawns have been they've been cleared out over many years. Smaller grey box trees they're growing in, so the forest is regenerating itself. Massive numbers of tree hollows, but obviously not enough because the birds are squabbling rather viciously about possession of the hollows. We've had a pair of uh white-bellied seagulls, they nested here twice about ten years ago. They had a battle with the wedge-tailed eagles and they won the fight and they nested here, but a couple of years later the wedgeys came back and this is their territory again. But at the moment they keep out of the forest because the whistling kites are nesting and they exclude them. The wedge tailed eagles, I think they're nesting down on the river at the moment. So we've got about four different pairs of wedge-tailed eagles in these various vicinities here and along the river. Oh, other raptors, little eagles sometimes come in here, not at the moment, because they're being excluded because of the western whistling types. Paragreen falcons. Had a black falcon here about a month ago. It came and went. Hobbies, brown gothawks, sparrow hawks, brown falcons, black-shouldered kites. They all all live here, but they're sort of treading wearily at the moment. Yeah, we've got a mob of about 30 kangaroos at the moment. They've they appeared about ten years ago, though we didn't have any. A few moved from Mount Cottrill, which is into Bush's paddock, so they the numbers expanded there because it's mainly grassland. Then during the we had one old old male kangaroo, he lived here for quite a few years on his own. Then with COVID came, we weren't we weren't coming out all that often. A few kangaroos moved in here in our absence. They talked about five, then they've took seven. We've had about 15 or 16 for the last year or so, but last month or so we had about 20, but now we've suddenly got the count of 30 this morning, so they're all being displaced from it. The new housing belt because there's massive housing development happening out west here, and all the kangaroos they're all being pushed outwards and they're looking for new homes.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

So how important does it make a patch of bush like this out in the west?

SPEAKER_02 5:01

These are very important because most of it's gone. This is all covered with bushland, um, grey box woodland and grassland and patches. But the grasslands is virtually all gone because that's just that's just real estate. It's got no economic value, unfortunately. A few patches of woodland left, there's one here, that's about 60 hectares, another one about 40 hectares, about half a kilometre away. Ainsbury Forest, that's about 300 hectares, which is the other side of the river, and a few tiny little patches, just a few hectares, but that's about it. So as uh Melbourne expands rapidly like it is at the moment, not expanding hugely, these little remnants of wish land have become more and more important to us because we're losing lots of wildlife. Even this woodlands like this, we're losing bird life, the one the specialized woodland species have disappeared, like I said before, the diamond fire trails, we've lost them. The brown tree creepers, the Jackie Winters, and the other one. Yeah, they're well they're declining. So they're really important for conservation-wise, because they're these are the only refuges left where the wildlife can survive. Lucky in Milton we've got a couple of the Werby River, but also got a couple of creeks in Milton, Toolin Creek and Arnolds Creek. They're still got, they keep their, they've got the trees have been kept there, so they're valuable wildlife corridors. So migrating birds when they're moving from northern Australia, they move along the Great Dividing Range, then they get the creeks that move north-south, so they move along there, well they end up end up in here and down towards the coast. So we get a lot of migrate migratory birds here as well, so it's refuges for those.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

That's fantastic. And you mentioned some old grey box. Do you have an idea of how old some of those might be? Have they ever been aged?

SPEAKER_02 7:04

Oh, not sure. I think I heard somewhere that they're about 400 years, but I'm not an expert so. Yeah, we've got a lot of those there though. Every so often we lose another one whether we have a thunderstorm or lightning strike, they can see the dead trees lying around. Once upon a time, whenever a tree fell down here, it was always cleared away to tidy up the bush for firewood, but once we sort of started you started working in here, we stopped that because it's they're part of the habitat. Well, the brown tree creepers, a lot of them they need fallen timber to feed on. So, yeah, so we've we've kept all the fallen trees and fallen branches now, which a lot of people think is untidy.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

It's a great position to be in to have hollows in this sort of area, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Uh yeah, a very large proportion of Australian birds, they they need hollows to nest in. Without the hollows, they disappear. Same as melting along the creeks there, we've still got a lot of old old trees left there, the old red gums with hollows, so even though we're losing a lot of the natural environment around this area, we've still got the creeks left and places like this.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

What's been your most exciting finds, flora and fauna, here?

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Oh, all the time really. Well it's always exciting to find eagles here, though, especially when you find an eagle's nest. At the moment we're watching a battle between a couple of pairs of galars, they're fighting over possession of a couple of nesting nest hollows that aren't quite big enough, so they're drawing blood and feathers.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Do you get any orchids and lilies and things?

SPEAKER_02 8:47

Uh a few little lilies, but don't think we've got any orchids, I don't think. They would have been here once upon a time, but most of the small wildflowers have all disappeared, but we're trying to bring back the understory plants here, like you see those brightly coloured red stakes, that's where we've planted shrubs and bushes, so trying to create a recreate an understory for again nesting habitat for the birds that don't nest in hollows, like the finches, they need bushy, bushy bushy plants to nest in. And the smaller birds they need shrubby areas to so they can hide from the raptors and the foxes and the cats. Otherwise they're out in the open and they get eaten. Yeah, and also important to heritage with various tree scar trees around. So there's obviously aboriginal peasants here once upon a time.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

I said there's scar trees around here on the site, yeah?

SPEAKER_02 9:49

Uh yeah, a few of them are scattered around there. Wow. We had an Aboriginal elder about here about two years ago and he found a couple of them that we hadn't noticed before.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

I guess that um the grey box are one of those trees that you you don't often realise how old they are because they don't they're not the biggest w widest tree that you see in the landscape. But uh even with a um a decent girth they can be hundreds of years old.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Yeah, several hundred years. I think four hundred years is what I heard, but that's well but don't take those gossip because I'm not an expert.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

No, that's alright.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

Yeah. Um they do fall down from time to time, and lightning strikes. The one we're standing here, you can see it's been hit by lightning, but so you've got this this sort of a the big gash that spirals around the trunk. Yeah. You've got to fight a few trees like that.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Wow, so we've seen some weather.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

Yeah, another one did a thunderstorm about five years ago, and one tree that just shattered. So large splinters of wood and timber. That's two or three metres long, just scattered in it in a circle. So luckily nobody was here when that happened.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Do you know how this site came about in terms of being protected and looked after?

SPEAKER_02 11:09

Um originally it was part of the Melton Sewage Works. And the Shire engine, I'm not sure what it was, but Melton Shire engine or perhaps he might have worked for the Melton Sewage Works. He decided to protect this. He had an idea of of you of using the the forest here, the forest remnant as a or as an asset, or for beekeeping and protection. Actually it's called Pinkerton Forest because the the Pinkerton family are the first people, first white people to settle here. They only stayed a few years, but one of the Pinkerton descendants still comes out here helping with the take care of it, as part of our group. Um yeah, so it was literally kept as for economic value for beekeeping was the main thing he was interested in this fellow, but so it was kept for that and it it's been kept by accident almost. Same as Ainsby across the river there, that was kept intact because they they needed someplace to put the sheep when they shore when they shore them in the winter time because they have sheep. When they mean shore in the winter they often die of exposure. So they kept the Ainsbury forest there. That was one part of the huge forest, so they used to put the sheep in there after that after they've been sure to protect them. Same thing happened here for quite so many years that when the sheep been shore and they could place them there with when it was really cold, windy weather, but we just continue that now because it was causing damage to the natural environment.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

What do you think would be the the dream for this property?

SPEAKER_02 12:54

Just keep going and just uh keep going the way to keep being protected in perpetuity, hopefully. Obviously, nothing's forever, but just keep improving it and perhaps addressing the loss of endangered birds. Could we be out thinking, like I said, we are losing a few of them. We could work out why we are and how to how to prevent that from happening. So yeah, try and hang on to the few remnants of bush land that are still around here, because they're all oars and dangers. So there's still a bit of work to be done that patch over over there that's that's been newly acquired. It's about 12 years it's been part of the reserve, so that's slowly growing back as well. So I just keep protecting it basically as remnant for remnant wildlife and lungs, lungs of the earth.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

And I I presume places like this can't survive or don't survive well without intervention for removing the box thorn and weeds. What sort of work you have you been doing out here?

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Uh we're constantly weeding the box thorns, the box thorns keep growing back because birds keep eating the seeds, the berries, because the box thorn berries are quite tasty. Birds eat them, foxes eat them, they keep bringing the seeds in, so it's a constant battle just to keep them from returning. Other ones like a Cervata Tussic, Galenia, that's a major problem at the moment. We've got that pretty much under control in the forest now after several years, but again that keeps coming back. So weeding is the constant thing. The constant amount of weeds keep coming in, they get blown in, seeds come in by birds and foxes. So it's just a matter of preventing them from coming back.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Do you think the west of Melbourne and some of the conservation areas around here get enough attention or need more attention compared to other areas around Melbourne?

SPEAKER_02 14:58

Um not too much attention, I suppose. They need to be protected so you like you wouldn't turn this into a a parkland. Because it'd be love to death. Yeah, they don't don't get that. They basically do need more attention because if people don't know about them, they can be lost. Like Ainsbury Forest across the river there. Nobody really knew about that, and before we knew about it, suddenly there's a house development right on the edge of it, and that's under pressure now. So you need to have in have public interest in these areas so that people know they're here and know why they're valuable. So otherwise it just I could think we lost so easily. We do plant wildflowers, we've been planted wildflowers as well as the trees and the shrubs. We planted a few wildflowers. I even just noticing this morning that the Vitadinias, they're all over the place. We planted a few of them about ten years ago in one of the corners and they're just spreading through the forest, so that can be done.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

And when you're here volunteering this, doing this work, what's the what's the reason you feel the need to come and volunteer?

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Oh, I think that's the basically it needs to be done. Like we're making a mess of the entire planet. We're not leaving much of much of a world for our children and grandchildren. So it's got so it's that part of the part of the sense of duty to try to protect and save it, but we enjoy it. Once a week we come out here and enjoy this. But yeah, apart from doing the work, weeding, weeding's their main job at the moment. Spraying and matting in, but we else would join to be in a sunny day like this. With birds around us.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Are you familiar with what's going on with the geology over here at all?

SPEAKER_02 16:50

Um, it's all volcanic. Um, Mount Cottrell is a low volcano. Uh two Ks away, I think. Apparently, all the lava here came from Mount Cottrill, it's just spread out. It was an old shield volcano. A few million years old, I think it's fairly recent, but it just covered the whole area here with uh lava. So it's basically basalt and scoria. So it's not a lot of the soil there's got a characteristic red reddish colour that we can get from the scoria. And deep down you get patches of black soil which which is from the basalt. It's all volcanic, so it's got it's a specific type of botany. It's also a good tram. Good for grassland apparently because it's a because it dries out quickly and cracks, so grassland grows well out here, and also hardy areas like grey box trees.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

If somebody was listening to this and they thought, I I want to come do something about this, I want to help out, how would you encourage them to get involved? Maybe they're living in Melbourne, maybe they're living in Melton or anywhere, what would you encourage them to do?

SPEAKER_02 18:07

Oh just contact us or or probably contact Greater Western Water because they're publicly available and or contact us really because Greater Western Water, they'd probably refer them to us, hopefully. We're always looking for more people to do to come out here to help help out. From time to time we've had school children coming out and we we might have another school group come out here as well. Scouts, girl guides. There's an area on the edges ofest, it's about a 12-hectare area that's been used for disposal of sewage waste by bio waste for about 25 years. But when Western Water built the new plant that became redundant, so they asked us if we wanted to plant a plant a forest on it. So which we've been doing, so we we're creating grey box woodland on this 15 hectares of previously fruited land. So 15 years later we've got covered in small trees, only a couple of metres tall, but it's imagining turning into a forest in about 50 years' time, it should look good. That's pretty rewarding. It is, yeah. It's a major. Actually took a surprise when we found out of it. The project was 15 years old, but yeah, so that's uh showed a lot of vision on the part of Greater Western Water for doing that. Just you know, that's a change of practices and had it suddenly had some vacant land and they decided they'd replant it with the original west land, which we've been doing.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

That's great. And have you put a lot of trees into the property?

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Yeah, we've done a lot of planting, but a lot of trees. We've planted quite a few trees ourselves and Westernwood have organised a few big public tree planting days. They don't all survive because it's had to be harsh weather, droughts, but it's most of them are surviving, so it's gonna take a long, long time before it resembles a actual bush bush land again. And before the bird life is slowly returning. The kangaroos they go in there because there's plenty of grass there. It's mainly pasture grass, but they seem to like it. Wow. So it's a major project, so about 100 years ago. Weeds is a constant battle, all these people. Every time we look around there's another weed appearing, so it's it costs a lot of money, but we've done grants. Yeah, we get various grants to different people and rest of the water, they they match most grants we get, but painting with mate weeding. Weeding is a major chore there, just keeping the weeds down until the the trees are big enough to crowd out the weeds.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

And how many people are in this group? Especially a few. Uh I imagine is there a five people.

SPEAKER_02 21:05

Yeah. Wow. The two of us are here every every week. Six. Six.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

We've left someone out, yeah. Six. Yeah. Um six people. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

And and I mean the two of us must not be. We're here every Thursday morning. Yep. We've all come out.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Because I keep thinking about this thing like of going, if you think.

SPEAKER_02 21:29

We have a chair sitting up.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Yeah, yeah, sorry. I'm just starting to think um there's like five and a half million people in Melbourne now. Maybe more across uh six and a half across Victoria. Yep. Don't quote me on any of those numbers, but there's a there's millions and millions of people. And we've got a old gross grassy woodland right on the outskirts of Melbourne and all these new suburbs that are being built. Yep. Um We've got a lot of people who do care about the environment.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

Yeah, the trick is to getting into contact with them, really. So you need people who are good organisers and people who are good organisers, good people persons. I'm not a good people person as you can tell, not good at speaking. So you need people to get other people to come out here and get them enthused. School kids, primary school kids, it's good getting them to involve because they're still very enthusiastic and it's everything's new to them. So they get really excited and they're planted. When they get into high school, they get a bit more bit more jaded and disillusioned and we'll do this daggy old environmental stuff. But later on when they get older again, they started having their families, they sort of come back to it again. But we were you know we were here planting when I was at school. How are they going? So occasionally hear from people, these adults, these young adults, they come up and oh you're so-and-so, yeah. We play we planted trees with you back in whenever.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

So I hope so.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

Sometimes because they're looking for healthy outside activities for their kids, trying to get them off their gadgets and their screens and heaven knows what or roaming the streets. So they'll often especially work in town and melting environment group with people and the young families they'll bring along their small kids, just get them interested in something healthy. Before they turn into teenagers and disappear into it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

And another world.

SPEAKER_02 23:26

Um, that's what we should be doing, getting getting more kids involved.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Is there a a target where you're what you're trying to get to with this? Is there a species you want to come back or something like that?

SPEAKER_02 23:40

Uh we had a did have a flagship species because of the diamond fire tail. So yeah, but sort of small stuff like lizards, like if you want the kingfishers, that's a spectacular bird. They skinks. We've got a few skinks here, so luckily, but a few blue-tongue lizards.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Have you seen a kingfisher here before?

SPEAKER_02 24:03

They come here in the summertime. Sometimes in here, not all the time. Well, they're probably here. We caught them on camera drinking from the the water trough just over there. Because we've got a permit Canber permanently on site, it's there all the time. It's not working so well at the moment for some reason, but so we've got a good idea what if the kangaroos they come there to drink every day. The fox comes there every day, possums they come to every night rather. Possums come every night and the fox comes well day and night. We've only got the one luckily. He's a bit hard to catch, so we just leave him there as a token predator.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Do you do any flora monitoring?

SPEAKER_02 24:43

Uh no, it's my bird. Well, we do bird monitoring four times a year, birds for that that's all them. But Bird Life Australia, they're all bird libird life Australia members, they come out here four times a year, so we've been doing that about 20 years, so we've got a pretty good idea that or what birds are out of here, like 173, but. It's a good list. That's a good list. That's all, yeah. It's sad when you lose birds too.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Has anything new come that you didn't expect to come in recent years?

SPEAKER_02 25:17

Oh, yours are the honey eater there. Yeah, yeah, I really heard a mystery bird about a month ago, I think it was. And they had a bird survey, which was just a week ago, and I just told them, described it to them, and they were wandering around, they come back. Oh, we found a spiny cheat honey eater. The two of them.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

So that's a new one for us. Well, apparently they've been found here before, but we've never seen them.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

So you think of more along the coast or something like that, spine cheese?

SPEAKER_02 25:47

Yeah, so I don't know what they're doing here. They've not still around, but I was here for a few for a few weeks. Yeah, the the sea eagles, that was a surprise when the sea eagles appeared here. I didn't think they'd be here. But they they nested for two years. So they that was during the millennial drought at a height and everything was dry. And uh all padded all these that we got a big dam behind us and that was full of ducks because all the ducks inland they'd all move to the coastal areas because there was no water. So we had a huge number of grey teal here and they had young birds. So the the sea eagles had a huge supply of grey teal that was still in to fly. So about every half hour they come down and grab another one. So the first year they had two baby eagles survived, which is unusual. The following year. Only the one survived, which is more normal. So we're surprised to see them here.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Do you have a favourite part of the reserve?

SPEAKER_02 26:50

Oh, well, really. I think it's an old blue blue box tree, and there's really huge, massive. That's nature's tree. I suspect that's probably a few thousand years old, perhaps. Really? Actually, this is quite nice because we usually come here after we've had morning tea, then maybe come here and have lunch with after we've done the work and discuss the what we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

To visualize that, we're sitting around a huge stump, like a m I mean that's got to be a a river red gum stump, I'm guessing. Would have been a couple of hundred years old. Um, at least, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:25

That was relocated from down along the river. Mm-hmm. There are a whole lot of there's a whole stack of them there, they were cut down from the old days. And they suggest they bring one up here as a table use as a table. So sitting there once they've done so, we need to level it though, because things tend to roll off. Uh yeah, I noticed it's got a bit of the castle pool table sort of vibe, hasn't it? It's sort of Yes, uh one of one of our members is gonna bring something. You're gonna lift it up and we're gonna put some chalks underneath to make a level, make it level so the drinks don't slide off. Yeah, so it's just well probably the favourite spot here, I suppose, because you can get a good view. See here before we had the kangaroos, they came, they all came hopping just around just near the tree over there in between them, and they didn't know we're here, and suddenly they all stopped and and they continued in there, so sort of counted 17 hopping over the fence, they disappeared into there, and then more of them came there and then they stopped and saw us and they middled around and eventually moved back behind us. So we had for about 15 minutes we had these about 30, no, 29, 29 kangaroos just looking at us. That was pretty impressive. Yeah, we could talk.

unknown 28:43

That's what we come back for.

SPEAKER_02 28:45

Yeah. Galars were nesting. Red stilled eagles. Usually we usually we we see them at least once here, but not at the moment, because the the whistling kites are very territorial. Normally you see them flying around too, they're whistling, they would they usually circle around and check at what we're doing because I like to know it's here, but they're very quiet at the moment. Now they're on the nest, they don't want to bring attention to themselves, I'm guessing.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

And with the density of some of the urban areas that are around here, and it is I don't know what the scientific term is, but I'll say chock a block, like the houses are really tight against each other. Um do you think the worry? It is worrying. Do you think the importance of places like this where you can we can sit here around a table listening to the birds, looking at an old growth forest, not too far, maybe ten minutes away from major development? How important is that to you as a a community member?

SPEAKER_02 29:44

Oh, to us personally it's really important, but it's uh supposed more you know we enjoy what we do, we like and love being here, otherwise we wouldn't do it, but it's more important that it's kept here, it's a part of the landscape that was been here for millions of years and it's all just vanishing. Yeah, yeah, so we can get the carbon monoxide that's expanding in the air, so yeah, it's just yeah, cleaning the air, like you said. So the more we lose, the less healthy the plants are going to become. Won't worry me so much because I'm not going to be here for very much longer, but I've got children, grandchildren. There's not much of a natural landscape left of the volcanic plains there was once. Grassland with patches of woodland like this, but it's all disappeared.

SPEAKER_01 30:34

I think it's a magic place. It is really magic. I can see why you're out here, and I as someone who's worked in conservation, I'm just happy this exists, you know, and it is.

SPEAKER_02 30:47

Couldn't come out here. The fact that it's here, that's important.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Yeah. And it exists because you guys have looked after this place.

SPEAKER_02 30:56

Yeah, also the vision of the Western Water for making it so. Yeah. Without them, we couldn't do it. If they decide to get rid of it, they could. Although I've various agreements there, but they decided it's worth keeping.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

Well, that's another episode. If you're interested in hearing more episodes, check out finding Melbourne's nature.com, check us out on social media, and listen to us on your favourite streaming services. I also say, why don't you go down to Pinken and Forest and lend a hand if you get a chance? It's a beautiful place, and I think you'll like it. Thanks for listening.