We're going to do some regeneration on our place.
The creek area already has some great pockets of native flora and even though it's a crown grazing title, there's no reason we can't lock up some areas to get more plants happening, and going some way to restore the indigenous natives that once lived along there, before European settlers decided they knew better what to do with that land (only, they didn't, they actually raped the land and then left it because it was no good to them with the consequence of land slippage).
We're applying for any and every grant available to help us regenerate, and the current one is EcoTender, through the DSE, though there are many other avenues to follow, especially as we have a waterway.
Whether this bid goes through or not will not prevent me from sectioning off other areas of our acreage to create pockets of regeneration and a haven for the bird life.
At the moment, the creek area is really it for native habitat - wombats, koalas, kookaburras, bellbirds, whip birds and the like. And that's great, because it's near where the caravan is! One day, though, we will be living at the top of the hill away from my beloved creek line, and I will NEED to hear birds! The wombats I can do without...
So, ever since the day we signed for our new farm, I have been fuelled by a growing passion for restoring some of our tenure to its former glory. It may take all of our lifetime. And I don't mean 'tenure' for just the grazing lease. I consider the whole property a mere 'tenure'. Yes, most of it is 'freehold' and 'ours' in a Euro-centric, economic, legal and administrative sense. It's ours on paper.
I prefer to acknowledge that, according to some circles, we're just borrowing it. Borrowing the stolen, in addition. However, as my family arrived here in Australia after the fact of Invasion, we live within a system, whatever its merits. I acknowledge the traditional owners, the Bunurong People, as the original custodians of 'our place'. One day it may revert to them. Who knows? Aboriginal people have the skills to survive and thrive in environments 'we' believe to be uninhabitable, and only because we don't have the intelligence about our environment than our predecessors did and still do. They could well outdo us in a resources crisis, and environmental crisis...climate change, for instance.
Anyhow, my aim is to establish some contacts with the Aboriginal community in our new locality (via membership of the South Gippsland/Bass Coast Reconciliation Action Group) and see if I can extract any knowledge about our specific location for flora and fauna. That's the plan. Of course, I'll keep you posted!
For now, we will start work on the 'ferals', such as Holly, White Willow and the Hawthorn trees. The White Willow, in particular, galls me. It's choking up the creek and whenever there is a flash flood in the creek (such as would have occurred today as a cold front passed through the state) debris becomes entangled in the elbows of the creek where the willows are. Broken limbs collect and end up looking like a half-arse beaver dam, where the beaver just knocked up a dam from the hard rubbish collection the night before...it looks choked. In a couple of years I hope to see a vast improvement, if I have to harness my horse to pull out the larger branches that impede water flow! I know that not all debris is bad, and if you saw some of these choked up elbows in person you may come to agree with me that it's not the way the creek was meant to be.
Grand plans, noble plans, human plans. All I can do is give it a red hot go, and hope that Tom feels the same way, because I will need help for these greening ambitions of mine for 'our' place that we are looking after. I've got a lot to learn, a lot of truths to accommodate and will need a lot of energy to fulfill half of what I've resolved to do. Energy I have. Time, I'm not so sure. But what's the hurry? We're moving to the country! That's a lot of peaches :)
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