My stretch of Kangaroo Creek

There are about 25 Kangaroo Creeks in Victoria, including two in my area. Naming mine took some time, apparently.

This 1891 map from the Titles Office (I assume) shows that Kangaroo Creek was a bit of a mystery. It is named Loddon River on the map but that name has been crossed-out and Leitches Creek added. But Leitches Creek actually flows into Kangaroo Creek a few hundred metres upstream (south) from my place and Kangaroo Creek flows into the Loddon a few km downstream (north). All three are roughly the same size this close to their sources, especially when in flood or dry, so the dithering is understandable.

Presumably the person who thought it was Leitches Creek assumed that Kangaroo Creek ended where it met Leitches Creek. But presumably the person who thought it was the Loddon River considered that the entire length of Kangaroo Creek, from its source, was the Loddon River. In which case they would have had to name what we call the Loddon, from the confluence with what we call the Kangaroo all the way up to its source, something else.

(Come to think of it, what are the rules for deciding which waterway is extinguished when two meet?)

My property is at the centre of the map. It’s the eastern half of James Bradshaw’s land, which is 80 acres. I don’t know when it was subdivided but according to my title I’m only the second owner of this 40 acres. A James Bradshaw of Glenlyon (the closest town to my place) won a prize at the Daylesford Agricultural Show in 1876. By default.

The Argus (Melbourne) 16 March 1876, from the NLA’s Trove project.

Above – the same area on Google Earth. Unsealed roads show more clearly than sealed ones in this image. This means that Pine Court is easily visible, which it usually isn’t, and Scotts Lane seems to be the main road from the south/south-west, rather than Porcupine Ridge Road.

Below – the same area on a topo map (very slightly enlarged). There are far more buildings than are shown on this map. Pine Court is the dashed line. The right-angled turn at the end is barely noticeable in real life. This is an extract from Vicmap T7723-3-1-1 (2004), which is part of the 1:30,000 series available as PDF downloads for a small fee.

EVCs

Ecological Vegetation Classes (EVCs) are benchmark classifications of typical vegetation communities occurring in specific geomorphological and climatic situations. However, one EVC can have different benchmark species depending on which bioregion it is in. Kangaroo Creek runs solely through the Central Victorian Uplands bioregion.

The Department of Sustainability & Environment (as was) put a lot of work into classifying the many bioregions and many more EVCs in the state, in anticipation of a classification and planning scheme that eventually failed to get through parliament.

Below is the DSE map of EVCs in my area. You can work out where my place is by comparing this to the maps in the previous (above) post..

The two EVCs on my place are EVC 23: Herb-rich foothill forest and EVC 164: Creekline herb-rich woodland. My place has been assessed against its EVCs by the Trust for Nature (with whom I have a Conservation Covenant) and the DSE’s Bush Tender programme. It did reasonably well but is missing a lot of smaller sub-story plants. I blame wallabies.

This is what the DSE estimated to be the EVCs in 1750. (This is a closer view than the map above.) For some reason 1750 rather than 1788 is used by ecologists as the cut-off year for the ‘natural’ Australian environment. The type and even the extent of the EVCs on my place is unchanged, but that doesn’t mean that my vegetation actually meets the EVC benchmarks.

Third chance

It’s a bit hard to see from the photo but this tree (Candlebark, Eucalyptus rubida) grew from – and now almost surrounds – the big stump of an older tree. Or, rather, the tree which was cut down managed to grow again. The stump was charred, probably from the 15 January 1944 fire, the last big fire in this area.

Will this tree survive the damage from the much less severe 2014 fire? Almost certainly.

You can see that the tree (Messmate, Eucalyptus obliqua) in the background, unscathed by the 2014 fire, has also grown around charring, probably from the 1944 fire. Many of my older trees have this scarring in their base and it often forms a deep hollow. Trees with deep hollows in the base are often decayed for a long way up the inside of their trunk but I don’t know if that would occur anyway, charred hollow or not.

1944 fires

I had known about the fire in this area in 1944 but hadn’t realised that it was one of many big fires in Victoria that Friday and Saturday, which killed about 20 people. It doesn’t seem to have become a ‘named’ disaster (Black Saturday, Ash Wednesday, Black Friday). This might be because it was wartime.

Below are the Saturday 15 January and Monday 17 January Melbourne Argus front pages. On both days the fires are not the main story. As with almost all images on this blog, click to enlarge.

               

From the NLA’s Trove project.

Background etc

This season had been quite a good one for grass but almost every eucalyptus on the place was devastated by Cup Moth caterpillars in the spring. A few younger trees died but most recovered, although the foliage is not as dense as normal.

If there isn’t another infestation next spring everything will be back to normal. Although missing most of a year’s growth.

Above – unwell in October 2013; below – healthy in January 2012.

Some of the Messmates (Eucaluptus obliqua) badly affected by Cup Moth have put out epicormic shoots – new shoots sprouting densely along limbs or trunks, often seen in fire recovery.

I also often see them on the stump of a tree that has snapped off (which happens uncomfortably often to my Candlebarks, Eucalyptus rubida). These shoots on stumps never seem to come to anything. I don’t know why this should be, as they have the resources of a large tree’s root system. I’ve tried just leaving them alone and I’ve tried trimming all but the strongest – same result.

Below is a view taken three years before the fire, almost to the day. I think the poa was denser and higher this year. The area to the left of the green pathway in the foreground (2011 was a wet summer – no green grass at all this March) had been burned two winters previously, as an experiment. It didn’t seem to me that the poa here came back any stronger or denser than the poa elsewhere on the property, most of which hadn’t been burned for at least 15 years but possibly much longer.

And approximately the same view today. Note the new graded track in the foreground, and the absence of the large dead tree. Also missing is my large pile of cut willow which had been nicely drying-out for several years.

And just for fun, here’s a similar view from summer 2011:

And finally another before-and-after. Notice the lawnmower in the ‘before’.