Finding Melbourne's Nature
Finding Melbourne’s Nature is a walking conversation series exploring the wild places within the city.
Ecologist Ben Cullen walks through reserves, wetlands and remnant bushland across Melbourne/Naarm with Traditional Owners, First Nations voices, conservationists, scientists and community members, each choosing a place that matters to them.
Together they walk and talk about what lives there, what’s changed, what needs protecting, and their own journey in learning about and caring for nature.
You’ll hear footsteps on tracks, birds overhead, wind in the trees, and the city never too far away.
Finding Melbourne's Nature
Darebin Creek, Reservoir with Neil Blake
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Neil Blake OAM has spent decades noticing and protecting nature in Melbourne’s urban landscape.
We walk along Darebin Creek in Reservoir, a place Neil knows incredibly well. He’s the Port Phillip Baykeeper, founding director of the Port Phillip EcoCentre and, in his own words, a “Tawny Tragic”.
As we search for Tawny Frogmouths along the creek, Neil shares his journey from growing up beside the Murray River to becoming a St Kilda park ranger and a lifelong advocate for urban waterways and wildlife. We talk about citizen science, Little Penguins, microplastics, Imperial Blue Butterflies, the importance of communication in conservation, and why building relationships can be as important as the science itself.
Neil has also used music throughout his life to connect people with environmental issues. And at the end of the episode, you’ll hear a song written and performed by Neil beside Darebin Creek, with the creek itself as his backing band.
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. Today we're lucky to be walking along the Darabin Creek in reservoir with Neil Blake, OAM. Among many things, Neil is the Port Phillip Baykeeper, the founding director of the Port Phillip Eco Centre, a longtime advocate for urban waterways, and, as he puts it, a tawny tragic. We start beside the creek looking for tawny frog mouths and the conversation moves from there. Neil talks about growing up on the Murray, working as a St Kilda Park Ranger, penguins, microplastics, citizen science, music, and how creeks like this connect the suburbs to Port Phillip Bay. It's a lovely walk, made all the better by Neil's thoughts. I haven't been here before.
SPEAKER_01Oh well uh it's um I've been here uh quite a few thousand times. Yeah, it's a really nice spot along the creek, but uh and just very uh good for your health, I reckon. Strolling in these kind of environments. Yeah, absolutely. Of course, the health experts say I've got to walk a bit faster, but I'd like to sniff the daisies there with them. And I'll say stop and have a look at the frog mouth, you know. That's a good way to live. Yeah, and just to be sure that I'm uh looks like a frog mouth rather than a stick. Which can happen. Yeah, it happens all the time.
SPEAKER_00Do you mind introducing where we are?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this is uh the east end of reservoir. It's a very skinny suburb reservoir running east-west, but on the Darabin Creek boundary, uh, just at the end of Blake Street is where we are right now. Nothing to do with me than that, but uh and it's it's a good spot. Um yeah, and it's relatively close to where I live, so I've spent quite a bit of time just checking out the nature down there. I'm a great fan of waterways, arteries of the earth, no question about it. And uh I grew up on the Murray River, you know, so uh takes me back to the the old days. That's uh yeah, I really enjoy being by the creek and just seeing what's going on, you know. Do you mind introducing yourself too? Yeah, uh my name is Neil Blake. Uh various other files. The latest one I've got is Tawny Tragic. Oh right, I like that one. Yeah, that Port Phillip Baykeeper is my other role. It's been that way for many years. And started doing working in local government back in 1985 in St Kilda, and that led to giving a country boy an opportunity to have a look at what's going on in nature in the city. So it's been a great journey ever since that time, you know. Wow.
SPEAKER_00How did you first get into the environment? Was it growing up along the river or what was your journey?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I think so. I mean, you know, like I was going out the bush with my old man who was a sleeper cutter when uh when I was four years old, sort of thing, and uh just seeing the flowers and things like that. We moved from central Victoria up to the river in 1960. I think I was seven at the time, and uh the river was where you spent most of the summer. We didn't have air conditioning back in those days. And it's pretty hot up there. Uh and you really come to appreciate, you know, that just what the river does. It was also an irrigation area we lived in, you know, so it was created the economy for the local region. Uh had somewhere to go and fish, somewhere to swim and keep cool, you know, so all of those good things. Uh yeah, so uh I really come to appreciate nature from that perspective, but also was aware, coming from a timber cutting background, that we were actually impacting, although we weren't clear felling, we still were having some kind of influence, and uh it's something that couldn't be sustained forever. So it just sort of became aware, I suppose, of the fact that nature isn't all pervasive without being cared for. And if we don't understand what's going on and we don't actually see it and we don't know what to call it, we won't talk about it, we won't think about it, we won't plan for it. And I think too, that's a big thing in terms of our response to climate change. I really feel that people, if they don't, if they're not connected to nature where they live, they're unlikely to be all that fussed about it. Uh, you know. Or they'll just switch off, you know, so it's easier to switch off. But if you actually are connected to nature and you can go and visit it and you can see what's happening to it over time, then you're more likely to sort of be a bit more proactive about those kind of things.
SPEAKER_00People might not realise how accessible it is because, like here, there's there's suburbia on one side and then this beautiful natural resource on the other.
SPEAKER_01That's right, sports ground up here and uh ice hockey facility too, just all bordering on the on the creek escape. And I think the creeks too, they provide the sort of line at a corridor, habitat corridors that really should be should be treasured in urban areas. So yeah, again, that's a good reason to get to know them and uh try and uh do make the best result for them. How'd you get from the Murray to St Kilda? Well, I was sort of had very very many, I was actually a contracted sleeper cutter for a while too, until I was about mid-twenties. The forestry people said, Oh well, one of you guys has got to go. Is either me or my old man who weren't prepared to offer as many trees, so uh that had to be me. I uh came, I had spent some time in Melbourne prior to that, and also travelled around Australia a bit on doing uh seasonal work. There'd been various other things, including a part-time musician, and you know, so uh I sort of had a few skills that set me up to become a park ranger. Ah had a truck driver's licence, knew how to use a chainsaw. I'd done a bit of youth work in Collingwood too, for you know, so uh and the and the country music scene knew how to talk to drunks. No, I'm not saying all country music fans are drunks, but that was just that sort of element of being able to, knowing how to uh relate to people. Yeah, so I didn't necessarily need to know about nature. It was more people and parks management that it was about security and uh but uh yeah, so but it gave me an opportunity as I was a one-out park ranger roving around all the open space, including the foreshore on the weekends. I had an opportunity to stop and have a look at things. Yeah, so it's good. Now this one um this tree here is, would you believe there's actually a tawny frogmouth nest right at the top there?
SPEAKER_00Really?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so it's a bit hard to spot unfortunately. So uh you need um an Oculus to do that. So we're we're just about to embark on a tawny frogmouth study, a Kirch Citizen Science project, where people will be able to report on known nest sites. The main purpose is that there's actually three nest sites very close proximity to each other here, which is kind of unusual because tawny frogmouths are known to be aggressively territorial. Oh, to the point where males might kill each other. Probably only one's going to die, but anyway. The fact that they're so close together here, so what we're going to do is have volunteers who'll be assigned two nest sites, two neighbouring sites to come and check once a week over the October to January period, and we'll just record how many frog mouths are in the patch and uh where they're located, so we'll be able to get a sense of where the territorial boundaries might actually lie. That's all good fun. That is great fun.
SPEAKER_00When did you take an interest in tawny?
SPEAKER_01I've had them uh that interest probably for about the last 30 odd years or so. Right.
SPEAKER_00Is there something that attracts you to them in particular?
SPEAKER_01Uh well I suppose they're they're pretty cryptic kind of birds, you know, the fact that um they think they can fool us. You know, if they pretend to be a stick, they reckon they've got us fooled. Yeah, yeah. I think I find that interesting. So, yeah, so um, and they are hard to spot actually unless you get your eye in, you know. And the mate will be somewhere, could be 70 metres away from so they don't seem to roost in the same tree as the nest. Oh right. So I'm not sure why that is, but one thing that I've discovered, though I first started making notes about tawnies down here in 2022. And there's one nest site that I've discovered, and I thought, oh, you know, if I'm gonna keep an eye on this, I should actually start recording what's going on. And then I found that after the breeding season that there were actually six frogmouths in in the neighbourhood, you know. So, and it was obviously more than what they'd put the young that they'd produced. There were two families quite close to each other. So then I started roving further afield along the creek and I found that there was another nest site just a bit further up. So, yeah, it's been an interesting uh interesting journey. What sort of habitat do tawny frog mouths need? Uh their main diet is they're not birds of prey as people expect owls to be. They're not actually owls, but they eat a lot of beetles, insects and bugs. About 70 odd per cent of their diet consists of that. So open areas, but uh there's there's also a belief that uh overhead lighting could um, because they can hawk moths in mid-air that might be attracted to those lights of sexy. They do eat frogs and lizards and things like that, but uh that's a relatively minor part of their diet component. I guess it depends on where they are living, though.
SPEAKER_00Do you know where the name comes from, frog mouth?
SPEAKER_01I think it's just the uh the width of the of the beak, and it's a bit froggish like in that sense. Yeah, so it's a nice little patch of creek. Um it's interesting looking at the water too, just how it changes. It's a bit murky at the moment. I don't know. You've had a bit of rain which tends to sort of put a lot of crap off the streets into the creek, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_00Well, what's the journey of this particular creek?
SPEAKER_01Oh it it heads into the into the Yarra or the Birarung. I've never been to the actual headwaters though, but uh it'd be worth having a good trip one day. Absolutely. I've just clocked onto a tawny. You found one? Yeah. Yeah, this is actually a nest tree, this one. You got you picked it up well, yeah, that's a good one, that one. So that's the mate. If we come over here. Oh yes. So that's actually where the nest is, which is very odd. The tawny frog mouse are not very good architects. So ordinarily, you know, they might need some kind of cup shape to have a very flimsy platform of twigs. Um the fact that that one's on a just a single fairly large branch, I'm not sure how they've anchored it there. But anyway, they have actually bred successfully in in that tree in the past though. And how many young do they have? Well, generally speaking, uh they can will have three to four eggs, but most of the sites that I've been observing here have only managed to fledge one single young one. A couple have done two, but uh, one's more than normal. And partly because of their architecture, one of the major causes of deaths of frog mouse is nestlings falling out of the nest. So it's a bit of a crazy sort of thing, but they actually weigh one of the eggs a day or two before the others. So it's that hatchling has got a head start. So if they happen to be jockeying for food when their parents come back to feed them, it's possible for a weaker or smaller one to get just knocked out of the nest.
SPEAKER_00Do they get hassled by other birds while they're in the nest?
SPEAKER_01Uh well, no, I haven't observed that. I've seen uh a quad carrawong sort of giving a uh a fledgling a little bit of attention one day, but didn't actually get to the point of striking it or do anything. No, uh so yeah, we expect that um there'll probably be fledgling or hatchlings here within another week or two. Good, so you can see it's not far for that nest there, but then if we go down a little bit further, this is where the even closer nest is. So we've got three nests within 300 metres of each. Some uh speculation about frog mouth is that each one might need 9.2 hectares. I'm not quite sure where that came from, but that's uh that's according to Gazilla Kaplain's book, Tawny Frogmouth. Others suggest they might need 20 to 30 hectares, but obviously it'd depend on the carrying capacity of the habitat that they happen to be living in. So it seems that the carrying capacity of this particular area is quite quite high.
SPEAKER_00A bit of communal living going on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_00I wonder what makes the habitat so good.
SPEAKER_01Uh it's relatively moist here, you know, so that's always got to be a good thing in terms of sustaining insect life, etc. And also lizards and frogs too. Often um you can hear frogs calling. This is the Islamic College. Yep. And uh there are frogs heard calling from in that the grounds there, and there's a nest in here somewhere. I'm not exactly sure where it is. Um the first year I found them running. Here was just in this tree, but then the subsequent year I couldn't find them, but the family when the young ones were out of the nest, hang out on this tree here. So they have this um faithfulness to particular roost sites. So it's interesting. For example, the the area between the two nests that we've just passed, uh, there's I've never recorded from mouth in the trees in in between so this and they they go back to that same tree, you know, so it's just quite extraordinary.
SPEAKER_00Very faithful. So it's I guess it's important to keep these trees in the in the mix as they are.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's good to know which ones send to have eat key ones. This for example, this one here, the s what I call the small red iron bark here. Um it was a a regular roof site for tawnies. Uh for about 18 months or so I'd recorded, and then this big other tree fell on it, and uh, but that didn't put them off. So they keep still kept coming back here. There's a pear up there. Yeah, I gotcha, yeah. And that's a regular roof site as well. What's also been of interest with this family is that uh, and another one nesting for the is that um there's one of the young ones from last year's uh crop that has been hanging around in the area uh right up until this nesting season, you know. So it's unusual. Generally the fledglings will depart soon after the parents stop feeding them, which is after about a month. And uh, you know, so they go and got to find their own way, but some for some reason they're uh it's not uncommon really that there may be one that will stay around for the ri for another year or even two. Yeah, so these are all mysteries that we haven't quite worked out yet. What's it why do they do that?
SPEAKER_00How how important do you think citizen science is for collecting this sort of information?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I think it's vitally important really, because uh one one thing that I'm very conscious of is that ideally your data sets that you collect will be ongoing and you can start to see trends over time. You know, many scientific studies might occur over a three to six month period, and then that's it. You know, there's some interesting and useful information gathered from that, but just the cost and the and the logistics of gathering data over time, it's it's impossible to uh fund such things without significant volunteer contribution, and that's where the citizen science comes in. And where do you store or put that data? Well, uh I was actually making that on my phone for four years, and uh um I realised when I come to look at it, I had nearly a hundred pages of uh records that I'd accumulated. Wow. But uh yeah, on this particular occasion though, I've um um been fortunate that uh Jacinta Humphrey, Dr. Jacinda Humphrey, has come on board. She's provided us with a uh a tool, a digital tool that people can submit data from their phones and that'll land on her plate. She'll need probably a big plate.
SPEAKER_00If there's someone cable, but she's incredible.
SPEAKER_01That's right. So uh so I'm looking forward to seeing. We haven't actually rolled it out in a big way as yet, but probably start at the beginning of October. And uh we're just going to focus on the known nest sites here and at Darabin Parklands. Give that a try, see how the citizen scientists sort of find it if they've got any frequently asked questions or things that need to be attended to. And once we've done that trial, there's potential that could be rolled out over the length of the creek. As I said, at this stage, my particular interest in it is about getting some handle on the territory sizes, but you know, there are other obvious questions to be sort of gathered information on as well.
SPEAKER_00What would you encourage to anybody who sees tawny frogmouths in their local patch?
SPEAKER_01Well, the Port Philip Echo Centre does have a tawny frogmouth uh spotting page on the website, and so people can submit data to that. It's something we don't have huge resources to put a lot of time into managing, but uh that that's been going for quite a number of years now, so we've got sightings from all across Melbourne. It'd be interesting to actually do an analysis over it, see what's changed over time. So again, it's it's stuff that um just getting a handle on where they are. Well, I've found that uh 20 frog mouse, we don't see them down on the Mary Creek down near the Arrow or out in the arrow itself lately. But maybe I'm not spending enough time there. But whenever I do go and look, I haven't seen them for the last few years. So why is it when there is a pair nesting in the Darling Gardens in Clifton Hill? They're nesting in Elstwick and uh you know, Brasside Park and elsewhere. But yeah, so it's uh it all uh it's an interesting sort of conundrum, really, about what could go wrong. One of the concerns obviously is a rodenticide, the rat bait poisons that uh can have a big impact on owls and uh frogmouths. So uh the changes that are brought about in terms of the sale of those products is going to be interesting to see whether that has a an influence on the population too. I mean, perhaps they'll start fledging two rather than one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that could be that big an impact. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh most nocturnal birds have got some sort of uh being found to have some levels of rhodendicide in them. So and that's particularly problematic in the winter period when they actually, tawnies actually have a bit of a period of torpor where they shut down and they rely on their fat cells to get them through that period rather than going out and feeding. And that and the um toxins are often stored in the in the fat cells, so that gets released into their bloodstream during that period.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned the Port Philippico Centre. Would I be correctly understating by saying you had a bit to do with that?
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, no, I had quite a bit to do with. One of my uh I was still working with the city of Port Phillip at the time. I was given the opportunity to look at having a community hub and uh there were some brilliant people. I'd been involved with a number of periodic groups and founding a couple, and that became an opportunity to actually look at what an eco centre could do in terms of uh promoting what council was doing in regard to sustainability, but also providing resources for the groups who might meet in someone's lounge room or whatever. You know, so uh give it give people a place to go where they could get things photocopied all over and just talk to each other, meet each other. So we founded the Echo Centre in a structure that actually supported affiliate groups rather than just being uh this is a group, we do this. A big part of what we did was actually supporting other people who are doing like minded things. So yeah, it was um. Great opportunity, it was quite a bit of work, but I think it was very well worth it.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Well, they have a nursery there?
SPEAKER_01Uh no, actually Skink, St Kilda Indigenous Nursery Co-operative. We started that and that was down in Williamstown Road in Port Melbourne. How that came about was that we had originally had the nursery in the Adventure Playground in St Kilda. It was a relatively cramped space, but it was good. But then when the council amalgamations occurred in the early 90s, there were quite a number of buildings and facilities that became redundant. Port Melbourne Parks Depot was one of them. And so that was an opportunity for Skink to move down there. But State Skink, and now they become Billy's nursery, amalgamated with friends at Westgate Park. You know, like when I started my local government experience was ranging, the local native plants wasn't a thing back in the states, really. No, and uh well, native plants, there was talk about that, but uh nobody really understood what used to grow in St. Kilda or Middle Park or whatever. And uh yeah, but there were uh bluminary cactus out of the trobe, such as George Parris and uh Jeff Carr and others who uh thought of talking about local native plants, you know, so I got to go along to um quite a number of talks and things that were were conducted out at the trobe, and that sort of gave me some insights into that. So yeah, it's been an interesting journey, really.
SPEAKER_00Sounds like it. And how did that involve you becoming the bay keeper, the poor Philip bay keeper?
SPEAKER_01The uh Waterkeeper Alliance is an international organisation. There was a Yarrow River keeper, Ian Penrose, the Yarrow River keeper, contacted me probably around about 2006 or something like that, and said that it would be good to have a bay keeper, you know, so um would I be interested? And of course I was because um I'd had 20 years intensive experience with the St. Kilda penguins and looking at what made St Kilda so popular for them and aspects of the bay, what sort of threats they might face, etc. You know, so uh yeah, that was just a natural thing for my progression, I guess, and um it gave me uh a chance to sort of uh engage with people in other countries and what their issues were. Uh and yes, it's uh and also a close relationship with uh the uh river keeper as well. So we started doing um microplastic straws back in about 2013. That's something that we're we're starting to see the rest of the world of the community catching up on the issue of microplastic. It's something because you don't see them, you don't talk about them. So uh yeah, it needs to be um brought to the fore a bit more.
SPEAKER_00What were some of your most memorable experiences as the bay keeper? Well, yeah, that's a good question, really.
SPEAKER_01I couldn't say there's any one particular as the bay keeper, but uh one of the most memorable experiences I've had was uh was out on the the brack water one night just checking out the penguins and um someone had been fishing and threw some fish off cuts down on the rocks just on the shoreline. And a Rakali came along to was feeding on that the off-cut. And a stingray was trying to climb the rocks. And it didn't go away in a hurry either, you know, so it's really quite fascinating. Oh wow. But uh no, there's there's so many things that have happened though, uh, in terms of changes. We did some good work on cigarette butt studies and things like that, you know. So yeah, a big focus for me was what comes out of the catchments as really drives the health of the bay, you know. So that was something that um I've been very conscious of, and that's why creeks like this are important. It's been a fascinating journey, really. I and I think um, now I guess getting back to the Murray again, a lot of it started with when when I first saw the Moray River in 1960, I could look down into it and see down about a metre, and then but within three or four years after the carp had really taken over, it was almost the colour of the era. So uh yeah, just seeing that kind of change to a to a huge river system uh really demonstrated the impacts that human sort of folly can actually create on the on that the natural systems, you know.
SPEAKER_00So it seems a big part of your career has involved communicating with people. How much value do you put on that?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I think it's everything, really. That's one thing that like I'm not a trained scientist. I've never I have done had an intense interest in reading studies and reports from Big Field NATs, etc. But I'm not a scientist as such. One thing I did study was communication because it's fundamental to any any exercise, you know, whether it's be related to environment or commerce or whatever. You need to be able to communicate and get people enthusiastic and build relationships too. Now I guess that's the other key thing that I'm very big on, is actually creating working relationships rather than sort of blaming people and trying to shame people into doing something because you know people are generally res and organizations are generally resistant to that kind of approach. Yeah, so um I think uh it's apart from anything else, it's just a great place to be. And but the weeds, that's a huge problem. But I think the the Bradley Bush method of weeding is a really good ecological approach, and that's something that you can apply those kind of principles to um building relationships and growing uh community consensus on things too, is uh working out from your strengths rather than sort of uh you need to be aware aware of what those strengths are though. That's I love it.
SPEAKER_00I love the idea of using the Bradley Method system outside of just Bush regen but also in social context. That's brilliant, yeah. Who were the conservationists that or naturalists that you looked up to during your career?
SPEAKER_01Oh well, the first one I guess was Rob Scott, who is he actually came and worked on the parks department with Sidious and Kilda too, and he'd actually had experience of local native plants. So that was quite amazing, you know. Um there are other people though that have had close working relationships like George Fotheringham, Tony Flew, then and Naomi Sunner, fantastic people. Yeah, they were the they were the key people. Then there are some people though within government, you know, like Alan Webster, for example, Phil Wizboski from Coast Care. Uh people like that who are just um genuine interested in what they were doing and the outcomes we were looking to achieve, you know. And again, very affable, friendly people, but very clear about what the outcomes needed to be. But yeah, there's just too many really for me to actually I don't want to have a look anyway, it's important. But uh Rob was uh certainly a fantastic influence and uh he uh got the Association of Bush regenerators going in in Victoria too. There wasn't a national body, but uh it lacked a Victorian chapter until Rob sort of got that kick-started some years ago. Wow.
SPEAKER_00You've been able to incorporate your music into your communication as well?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think music is a really great way to connect with people who might not be immediately interested. So yeah, I've always written songs and that's something that I uh enjoy doing, and uh it's a good way. Yeah, yeah, I can recall uh in the early days of Earthcare we had a party at the St Kilda Town Hall one night, and uh I played a song called Life of the Party. And that Life of the Party is the old gum trees. It was probably the first punk song ever I come across as back in in the late 1980s, and uh and yeah, I still reckon that was a good song, and uh it just sort of again it's just taking a different approach where it's with a bit of a laugh and a smile and sort of but touching on the key points that are trying to be got across, you know, that uh we've got these wonderful resources that actually support so much nature. And we need to be be aware of that and manage it and make sure we don't encroach too badly on it.
SPEAKER_00Do you find music can reach different generations as well?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so uh we're working on a song at the moment called Pick Up the Broom with um uh MC Guddermouth, who's a rap singer, uh, who works for the Echo Centre, and uh his son, Yara, who's is learning the rap too, you know. So uh well that that that's about a message to industry that went to stop them allowing noodles to escape from industrial sites into the waterways and that's uh again it's a different approach to giving a message across it'll be with a smile rather than a an aggro face, you know, so and and just sort of sh well I use the term loosely, I suppose, but it's a it's a a smiley way to shame people to do the right thing, you know. So yeah, so anyway, just exp exploring those sort of avenues for tra for bringing about change. Uh petitions and things like that are all are all good and necessary, but they're still a little bit hands-off and uh yeah, I just find arts and music and talking as a good way just to connect.
SPEAKER_00And you've achieved incredible things and continue to achieve incredible things. Does a certain aspect of that involve being comfortable and trying to do something differently?
SPEAKER_01I think so, yeah. So uh one of the interesting ones uh was I got involved in re-vegetating St. Hilda Brackwater, well, no, can't call it re-vegetating, although there were some plants that we discovered had colonized this rock wall, human-made rock wall, beaded glass water, a couple of salt bush, you know, coast salt bush, a few things like that. And um it became apparent if we were serious about penguins actually taking up and growing their numbers, they needed to have nesting material because they were using bits of plastic and stuff like that, you know. So I discovered that most of the plants that would grow out there well were basically salt marsh species. And a good thing about planting and revegetating out there, there was no weeds. So it was just this rock landscape that we could actually try and so gathering seaweed and sand from the shoreline and using that as a planting medium, we could get things like rounded noonflower to grow very happily there. And uh after that was sort of doing well, you know, we got half the breakwater covered in plants over about 10 or 15 years. And we started, one of our team members started growing noonflower in toilet rolls. Uh, so it was a natural medium that could be planted with the uh and it wasn't needing plastic at all. Then the Earthcare penguin study started finding toilet rolls in their nest sites. You know, so the penguins were going and collecting their nesting material and pulling up the whole plant. So one of the things to overcome that, we've created a thing called the penguin-proof plant guard. So it's basically a one squeaker, one metre square uh timber frame with a mesh on the top of it, which um is small enough so a penguin couldn't get its beak through it. And uh that's been we've put in about a seven or eight of those out there, and uh that's allowing the noonflower to get a good hold. We've dispensed with the whole toilet paper notion, but um it's working really well, and so that's something that nobody ever would have thought about a penguin-proof plant code. That's just not going to happen, you know. But uh it was a necessity though in that particular case.
SPEAKER_00And that particular group of penguins, is is there a reason why they're there that's connected to the bay and the rivers or is there Yeah, very much so.
SPEAKER_01The um uh the less saline waters of Hobson's Bay, created by the Yarraflow, is very attractive for anchovy to come to spawn there in in springtime. And that's exactly when the penguins need food for chicks. So uh the perfect location, you know, they've got this sort of uh just a short hop down the down towards the garmouth and they're back with food basically on the same day to feed the chicks. So we found that um as a result of that that penguins in St. Phil, but their chicks are on average heavier than Philip Island. The um males and the females share the incubation role, so they take shifts, 24-hour shifts, whereas sometimes at Phillip Island one bird might be sitting on the eggs for four to five days waiting for its partner to come back. And while it's doing that, it's sort of losing bigger. Yeah, so there's definitely the location that provides that food supply at that critical time of year is really the key.
SPEAKER_00Do you have advice to people who are starting their conservation journey? Maybe now, maybe they're getting into a world. What's your experience from your career in it?
SPEAKER_01Uh well, just follow your heart, I suppose. I mean, you know, the reality was with regard to the penguins. I was St Kilda Park Ranger, but the St Kilda breakwater was actually outside of the uh municipal boundary. But I thought, well, what am I going to do? I'm going to go out there anyway, and I'll just see what happens. So, uh and as it turned out, I was encouraged to do that by people in high office uh over time, you know. So even though it caused some concerns, the the peop the penguins only come to light when there was a major proposal to build a concrete hardstand in the St Kilda Harbour, and some locals said, Oh, but hang on, these penguins, you know. So they wouldn't have been thought about unless that had happened, and that hardstand ultimately would um scrapped. A good outcome. I just thought we come down to this spot here, and it's where I first met my first imperial blue butterfly. Oh. Yeah, and just these locations, this one here, and these couple here. So um is that was about three years ago now, and there were quite a few breeding and active around this area. Um last year there's only one or two, you know, so it's but there's some over the other side of the creek now. So there's a few spots. Again, we need to be careful about sort of making those spots sort of known to people who might do the wrong thing or um but we also need to know they're there so that the area is managed in a way that doesn't impact on their habitat needs, you know. And the ants that that support them have got a nest somewhere there, you know, or an ant burrow somewhere in the underneath those grasses there, and we need to be conscious of not destroying that. So, what habitat requirements do they have? Well, it seems that um what I'll observe with the imperial blues, wherever they occur, they're always in a very sunny spot. So they're not overshaded. It's just they tend to use a range of acacias, so it's been mostly silver wattle that I've seen, but black wattles as well. And um yeah, and that sunlight though that seems to be the key. The other thing though is the ants have to be there. And it there's one suggestion in that the ants actually attract the females to lay eggs on the crevices in the bark of the trest. Uh, I don't know how they would do that. That's that's unless it's just luck. So again, but it's interesting that you can see here there's a whole grove of silver wattles here, uh, and yet the actual Imperial Blue breeding has only been confined to three or four of them, whether again, whether it's just blind luck or there's some sort of environmental trigger that gets them to go to those particular spots in this.
SPEAKER_00And I understand your music writing has even been influenced by this place where we are today.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I no question about that. Uh I think um, you know, you can be sitting at home on the couch playing guitar, or you can just go and get a bit of ambience and atmosphere to join in, and that creek is a good uh good backdrop for the sound escape.
SPEAKER_00Your backing band is here. That was the amazing Neil Blake sharing some incredible knowledge, and I want you to please stick around because Neil has been kind enough to share a song that he wrote and performed on the Darabin Creek with the ambient sounds in the background. It's a wonderful song and coming up shortly. If you want to find out more about Neil, which I'm sure you do, please check out Neil Blake Bayekeeper, and there's a range of information online about all the things that Neil's involved in. Also, we mentioned the Port Phillip Eco Centre, it's a great place to spend some time. I encourage you to check it out. I want to ask you if you liked this episode of Finding Melbourne's Nature, please check out more episodes on findingMelboyn's Nature.com or on your favorite streaming services. And I love hearing from you too. So if you've got any feedback, thoughts, if you want to rate the podcast, I'd love for any interactions. Thank you for joining. I look forward to the next walk, and I'm sure you're gonna love Neil's song. And here it is to Neil and his backing band.