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Australian Plants Society - Warrnambool & District Group February 2016 Newsletter
AUSTRALIAN PLANTS SOCIETY (Formerly SGAP) Warrnambool & District Group Inc. Newsletter
February 2016 No 412
Incorporation No: AOO1312OX ABN: 51672752196 Web: www.warrnambool.org/sgap
DIARY OF EVENTS: 26th February 2016 speaker will be Bill Weatherly 1st March 2016 - Committee Meet-ing at Halls. 25th March - John Sherwood speak-ing on his trip to Galapagos Island Please contact me with any ideas you might have for our diary for the next year. What activities would you like to see? More Garden Visits?? Trips away?? More propagation nights?? Please let us know what you think.
Hi members, EDITORIAL Its seems like such a long time since we last had a members night, a lot has happened since last November. While the weather has not been as hot as expected this summer, there has been very little rain. In fact our gar-dens are struggling along with very little in flower because of this. Hopefully we will get some decent rain soon and we will see our gardens respond accordingly. Warrnambool City Council is holding its Sustainable Living Festival this Saturday on the Civic Green and various groups and organisations will be participating. Swan Reserve will be utilised as one of Warrnambool’s satellite locations and the Friends of Swan Reserve will be holding a tour of the garden at 11.00am (See page 6). WCC will provide a marquee tent for the day and Bryan Haywood from Nature Glenelg Trust will be giving a talk on bringing Butterflies to your garden at 12.00 noon. Our group will be assisting on the day by providing floral displays, if you have any flowers you can contribute, please drop it into me on Friday so Joyce can make up the display boxes. Please come along on Saturday if you are able to, to support the Friends of Swan Reserve in this public event. Our speaker this month is Bill Weatherly, thank you to Laura Prentice for providing a background to Bill’s life and subject of his talk. (See page 2). We will be having a meal with Bill at the RSL Club at 6.30pm and will book some tables for this if you would like to come a along. Otherwise please come along to our first members night for the year and bring along something for the display table if you can. Hope to see you there, Cheers, Kevin
Members Night: Friday 26th February 2016 8.00pm. Speaker is Bill Weatherly
Correa reflexa ‘Grannys Grave’
The APS Warrnambool & District holds meetings on the 4th Friday of each month at the Mozart Hall Warrnambool at 8pm.
‘Plants of the Great South West’,
book on plants of South West Victoria
$20, available from
Kevin Sparrow at
Ph: 55626217
Like us on
www.facebook.com/warrnamboolsgap
2 Australian Plants Society - Warrnambool & District Group February 2016 Newsletter
Our Speaker For February is Bill Weatherly by Laura Prentice
Our speaker for February 2016 is Bill Weatherly. Bill has a
very keen interest in our native flora and fauna and in the
landscapes of the South West. A trained zoologist, Bill man-
aged his family farm at Streatham for many years, all the
while tinkering with putting native plants back into the land-
scape and observing the birds and animals on his farm. He
experimented with propagating and planting understory and
grassland plants into the farms shelterbelts with varying
success but always learning from his endeavours.
Bill was involved in setting up the nature reserve on the
historical Mooramong property near Skipton where he
helped trial various methods of restoring grassland
plants. More recently Bill was instrumental in setting up the
“ Bringing Back the Banksias” project which aims to focus
some conservation and restoration effort on Banksia
marginata (Silver Banksia), Allocasuarina verticillata (She-
oaks) and Bursaria spinosa (Sweet Bursaria). The Bringing
Back the Banksias project has so far established seed
orchards, recorded known locations of old remnant trees
and applied for funding to undertake genetic research
into Banksia marginata.
Bill is a gentle and engaging speaker, a great storyteller. Bill
will be bringing all his experience and knowledge to
Warrnambool for us next Friday. I do hope you can come;
you are bound to learn something new.
Photo above: Bill inspiring the next generation of naturalists at the Dunkeld
BioBlitz in 2014.
3 Australian Plants Society - Warrnambool & District Group February 2016 Newsletter
Near Bullfinch (the first gold mining town in WA but now almost derelict,
except for the large, handsome stone hotel), Southern Cross and Coolgardie
we visited several great granite inselbergs (Weira, Baladjie, Karalee and
Boondi Rocks), some with rock-wall water catchment structures around
them.
The road passes from cleared wheatlands into the Great Western Woodlands
that stretch past Norseman and along the western end of the Eyre Highway.
Salmon Gums and Gimlets are prominent there. The Nullarbor plain was
coloured with wildflowers. We visited the Head of The Bight whale-
watching centre where we saw several whales close to the cliffs. From May
to October the Southern Right Wales are in the bay to calve and frolic
around before departing for the cold Antarctic waters.”
November Meeting with Rod Bird - Trip to Central Australia and Beyond
This is a brief report by Rod on his trip to Central Australia which he pre-
sented to our group at the November meeting.
“We began this 6-week, 12,000 km bird survey and flora observation trip in
late July 2014. From Alice Springs we drove through the Western MacDon-
nell Ranges and then west on the Gary Junction Rd. From there we travelled
south to Newman, through the Karlamilyi (Rudall River) National Park, a
very large, remote and wonderful desert park.
From Newman, the many picturesque gorges of Karijini NP were explored.
We then travelled north to Dampier where the world-renowned Aboriginal
petroglyphs on the Burrup Peninsula were inspected.
Going south, we visited Exmouth and the Ningaloo Reef, then to Shark Bay
to see the stromatolytes and birds at Hamelin Pool and the dolphins at
Monkey Mia.
Further south were the gorges and plains at Kalbarri NP. The Murchison
Rose was flowering on the coastal cliffs. Continuing on, Coalseam Conserva-
tion Park was notable for geology, birds and drifts of pink, yellow and white
everlastings. The hot spots for the fabled WA wildflowers were next:
Eneabba, Cervantes and the Nambung NP (Pinnacles), followed by Lesueur
and Badgingarra National Parks,
At Charles Darwin Reserve (a former sheep station beyond the wheatlands,
now a Bush Heritage property near Mt Gibson), we saw the famous Wreath
Leschenaultia and enjoyed the varied woodland vegetation of that reserve.
Homeward bound now, to the Koorda Flora Reserve to see the Koorda Rose,
then on through Mukinbudin where we passed the wheat farm held by Rod’s
father as a soldier-settler from 1922 to 1944. The large block of trees around
the old house and stables still stands, a stark exception to past clearing prac-
tice.
Scene from Karijini National Park
4 Australian Plants Society - Warrnambool & District Group February 2016 Newsletter
President: Kevin Sparrow Phone: 55626217 Vice President: Bob Artis, Brown St, Allansford. Phone: 0417 321225
Secretary: John Sherwood. 26 McConnell St, Warrnambool Phone: 55628064 Email: [email protected]
Treasurer: Mike Halls, 127 Rooneys Rd, Warrnambool 3280 Phone: 55626519 Email: [email protected]
Newsletter Editor: Kevin Sparrow 35 Swan Street, Warrnambool. Phone: 55626217 Email: [email protected]
Publicity Officer and Librarian: Vacant Public Officer: John Sherwood. Phone: 55628064 APS Reps: vacant,
History Book Coordinator: Joyce Sparrow. Other Committee Members: Kerry Artis, Laura Weedon, Louise Sheba
Please submit your articles for the newsletter by the end of the second week of the month
APS Warrnambool & District is a District Group of the Australian Plants Society (Vic) All members are required to also be a member of APS Vic.
Riparian Plants of Lake Pertobe By Kevin Sparrow
This week Louise Sheba and I did a quick survey of the riparian plants at Lake Pertobe. Lake
Pertobe is a drastically altered landscape with lots of weeds and other introduced plants.
Given that Warrnambool City Council is in the process of producing a management plan for
the area, we thought it a good idea to survey what remnant species we could find to contribute
to WCC’s plan. Below is the list we came up with, one is a threatened species.
NOTE: Some of the larger species could have been planted in the past.
Allocasuarina verticillata—Drooping She-oak
Apium prostratum subsp prostratum var.
filiforme - Sea Celery
Calystegia sepium subsp. rosea - Large
Bindweed
Crassula helmsii - Swamp Crassula
Distichlis distichophylla - Australian Salt-grass
Ficinia nodosa - Knobby Club-rush
Juncus kraussii subsp. australiensis - Sea Rush
Juncus procerus - Tall Rush
Leptospermum lanigerum - Woolly Tea-tree
Lobelia anceps - Angled Lobelia
Lobelia irrigua - Salt Pratia
Melaleuca lanceolata - Moonah
Myoporum insulare - Common Boobialla
Mimulus repens - Monkey Flower
Phragmites australis - Common Reed
Rhagodia candolleana - Seaberry Salt-bush
Samolus repens - Creeping Brook-weed
Schoenoplectus pungens - Sharp Club sedge
Selliera radicans - Selliera (k)
Senecio minimus - Shrubby Fireweed
Schoenus nitens - Shiny Bog-rush
Tetragonia implexicoma - Bower Spinach
Typha domingensis - Narrow leaf Cumbungi
Urtica incisa - Scrub Nettle
Selliera radicans is a threatened species (k)
5 Australian Plants Society - Warrnambool & District Group February 2016 Newsletter
Julie Eagles reports that the landscaping works at Warrnambool Community Gardens has begun with initial earthworks
and laying out the area in readiness for the landscaped garden area and proposed seating. We will be assisting the group
with some bush tucker plants and helping to plant them out. Also installed last week was the aboriginal acknowledgment
rock supplied by Bamstone of Port Fairy. This is part of the Recognition Seat that is an important part of the landscaping,
recognising the original inhabitants that occupied the land before the arrival of Europeans and their displacement.
Work Has Begun On The Landscaping at The Community Gardens
6 Australian Plants Society - Warrnambool & District Group February 2016 Newsletter
Sustainable Living Festival
Come along to our Open
Day at Swan Reserve next
Saturday 20th February.
We will be running a tour
of the native garden at
11.00am, followed by a
free workshop by Nature
Glenelg Trust at 12.00
noon. The workshop is
open to anyone with an
interest in learning more
about native wildlife, and
native plant gardening.
Butterfly expert, Bryan
Haywood, will speak
about the butterflies of the
South-West and the native
plants their lifecycles rely
on. You will receive notes of the types of species to include in a but-
terfly attracting garden, and other garden design factors to consider.
Australian Plants Society Warrnambool & District will assist with
native plant and other displays. Come along and support the Friends of Swan Reserve. You can find out more about
the Sustainable Living Festival at: http://www.warrnambool.vic.gov.au/slf
