Australian Bush Life

An example of a Fire Prevention Notice.

On Christmas Eve past our surprise present was a Bush Fire Prevention Notice in the mailbox. This is a strongly worded legal letter which outlines fuel reduction works that you must undertake on your property. It can be a little overwhelming as works must be completed within the specified time frame or they can be undertaken on your behalf and you can be left with the bill.

The Bush Fire Prevention notice really rattled us as we recieved the letter during the holiday period (Christmas Eve) and the works were required to be completed before January 2nd. What if we had been away and come home to our bush block slashed to less that 100mm? We would have been devastated – our indigenous plants are just recovering after the bushfire! Let alone been left with the bill to pay for the devastation.

While we understand the need to manage fuel loads to reduce the risk of bushfire for community safety, we did not move to our bushblock to turn it into a parkland. We can see the need to slash and maintain areas of weedy/pasture grasses or thickets of weeds such as blackberries as they do contain a high fuel load. But we only have indigenous bushland, maintain a cleared area and well watered vegetable gardens around our home, have a home with low risk of flammability and do not have any vegetation touching our home. Our home has actually just lived through the bushfire in 2009.

Some information that we have found out about Fire Prevention Notices since being served with one. As it is a legal document it is imperative that you act immediately before the deadline for completion of works specified in your letter.

• You have the right to oppose the Fire Prevention Notice if you have bushland that you want to protect
• Write an initial opposition letter in writing asking to work together with the fire prevention officer to come to an agreed management strategy, ask for more time if you need it and send it by certified mail
• Clearly outline how you already manage your property and bush to minimise the fire and fuel load risk
• Arm yourself with knowledge about your land such as knowing your local plants, animals and habitat that you want to protect
• Work with your local fire prevention officer to develop a mangement plan for your property if required
• You have the right to ask how and why the notice has been served to you
• You have the right to seek clarity on what specifically the letter requires you to do as we were very unsure with the ambiguous wording regarding what vegetation exactly was required for removal
• Try to contact someone in your local council who works in “environment” or with “indigenous vegetation” to gain advice as they may have a different angle to the fire prevention officer
• Contact your local Councillor or environment groups to ask for advice/support as required

By asking questions it appeared our notice was served on us without a fire prevention officer visiting our property and was purely on the request of a neighbour, which is allowed under the CFA Act 1958 – section 41. Our neighbour is looking to build and is hoping to build a home to a low Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) rating, which is cheaper.

This is obviously easier if we clear all the vegetation from our block as the fire threat is reduced to their block, but in no way are we stopping their building altogether. In fact we believe that if you live in a fire prone area then you need to build a house to a high BAL using quality materials and design so that the home has a higher level of surviving the bushfire event. Asking a neighbour to clear and maintain their vegetation is not a long term sustainable solution for building to a lower BAL rating and is really just a disaster waiting to happen.

An example of the legal wording in a Fire Prevention Notice.

We felt particularly that this letter did not take into account the fact that all our indigenous plants are currently recovering from a recent bushfire and that currently all plants are between 1 – 2 metres tall (whether grasses, shrubs or trees). Also the coucil have just recently installed a roadside conservation sign protecting indigenous vegetation right near where we were being asked to clear/reduce fuel to. Here is some of the ambiguous wording that we sought clarity over – in fact we still don’t really understand what these words mean and what exactly we were required to do.

• Cut all “grasses” to less than 100mm. We only have indigenous grasses and they are mixed in amongst all other types of native vegetation (forming a habitat) so difficult to single each grass out and cut them.
• Cut all “blackberries” and “weeds” to less than 100mm. We don’t have any weeds including blackberries.
• Cut all “undergrowth” to less than 100mm. We still do not understand what this means. This is a classic case of an ambiguous word and can be taken in so many different ways. All of which tend to lean to cut everything. Apparently undergrowth does not mean trees or shrubs, in which case we weren’t sure how we could single out indigenous grasses from the regenerating trees and shrubs that have sprung up since the bushfire.

Anyway in the long term our fire prevention notice was anulled, without even so much as a site visit – all sorted out over the phone. But the process was stressful so we hope that we have made this journey easier for others out there hoping to protect their indigenous bushland from being cut to extreme levels. We believe that the strong and legally worded letter scares many people into clearing their bushland unneccessarily and in an undesired manner. If you feel like us then this would be very upsetting clearing away your wildlife homes too.

Here are some councils who have online statements indicating that native grasses and low indigenous vegetation are not the fuel load and major bushfire threat they have been demonised to be. Weeds are far more risky!

www.goldenplains.vic.gov.au/webdata/resources/files/Fire_Prevention_Notice_FAQs.pdf

Why don’t you make the greenie with all the native grasses cut their block?
Native grasses generate about 1/10th the fuel load of introduced pasture grasses such as Phalaris and Wild Oats. This is why we encourage the retention and regeneration of native grasses. This can only be achieved if we allow them time to re-seed. Not doing so encourages introduced grasses which create a much greater fire risk.

www.melton.vic.gov.au/Page/Page.asp?Page_Id=170&h=1

Sparse low growing native vegetation is less of a fire hazard than dense, tall growing pasture grass and weeds.

Roadside Conservation Sign - No Mowing.

Since the bushfire in February 2009 we have worked with our local council to get a street roadside conservation sign installed. This sign says “Roadside Conservation Area. No Disturbance. No mowing.”

The sign is placed on council owned land on roadsides. This strip of land is contentious as neighbouring private land owners often tend to look after them by “tidying up”. In our area this usually means mowing with little regard for the quality of indigenous vegetation remaining on these strips of land. Tidying up of habitat logs and leaf litter is also very common.

Mowing tends to occur through the bushfire preparation season - spring and into summer. It amazes us to see mowing on these areas often all that is mowed are ground cover plants such as indigenous grasses and wildflowers. Which at this time of year are actually astonishingly beautiful whilst flowering and their low fuel load is a minimal fire risk. We just don’t understand this behaviour which additionally stops the wildflowers from seeding and setting up the next generation.

Roadside reserves are some of the best quality remaining vegetation which hosts a great number of different indigenous plant species – local biodiversity. These exact roadside reserves are often used by Landcare and other volunteer type groups who undertake revegetation works. As they can use them to collect seed to bring back the diversity lost in nearby areas where indigenous vegetation is lacking or completely lost.

Roadside Conservation Sign on Street.

We have tended our roadside reserve for over 4 years. Mostly all that is required is a couple of days a year hand weeding to keep it healthy. It is an important route for local wildlife. Mainly echidnas hike up this protected stretch as often it is difficult for them to access or cross nearby properties as they would have to negotiate fences and pets particularly dogs.

Since the bushfires these roadside reserves were put under increasingly threatening levels of activity. From many levels of government there was a massive clean up process of removing dead trees, habitat logs, slashing  etc. Many local landowners also took the liberty to clear these areas after such a major disaster as who was going to question their clearing behaviour when they had just lived through the bushfire.

In addition there are many new people moving onto blocks that were sold by residents who lost housing and often these new residents are unaware of local indigenous plants and wildlife. So hopefully our new Roadside Conservation street sign will help this little strip of nature hold it’s ground for at least a few more years, actually we hope that with a little weeding maintenance it might now be there for those who come after us to appreciate it’s natural beauty.

Do you live in an area where there is quality indigenous vegetation on a road reserve that is not protected? Why not call your local council and see if you can get a sign installed on your street?

Using GardenWatchCam we have captured video footage on a spring afternoon of our mudbrick home in the sunlight. The native bushland is full of indigenous plants regenerating about 18 months old after the February 2009 bushfires.

Click on the links for a product review of GardenWatchCam or to view the GardenWatchCam video footage of us planting out our “Nut Grove” in the afternoon.

Quaking Grass - Briza maxima . Flowers.

This weedy grass, Quaking Grass – Briza maxima is really troublesome. It appears so pretty with it’s dangly little flowers and seeds. As with many weeds it would have been introduced as an ornamental grass due to it’s pretty features, but has the real ability to completely overtake an area and suppress competition particularly in the form of indigenous wildflowers and other indigenous grasses.

When we first arrived on our bush block almost 4 years ago Quaking Grass was one of our top weedy grasses and seriously threatening our indigenous plants and the overall quality of our bush block. As this grass is an annual, at first we didn’t notice it. But during the late winter we started to see many seedlings emerge and it wasn’t until spring when the flowers began to form that we were easily able to recognise it and decide on a plan to manage it.

Quaking Grass is actually a really easy plant to identify and also to remove by hand as it pulls out really easily. The main issue is that there can be quite large amounts of it which can seem daunting. So using the “Bradley” method for weed control we decided to weed from the good areas of indigenous bush with few weeds and then make our way out to the more weed infested areas.

This technique works well in a few ways as it gives you an inital good feeling because you can clear out the easier bits first and see the difference it makes to your good quality bush. Also by removing weeds from the good bush it allows it to recover and regenerate further increasing the ability of your bush to recover to it’s former healthy state. Once you get hooked on seeing the benefits then moving outwards to tackle the harder more weed infested areas does not seem as daunting.

Quaking Grass - Briza maxima. Outcompeting the "native bush" on a roadside.

One driving factor for us when we got really stuck into weeding out Quaking Grass was that by hand pulling you really get the chance to get down low and know you bush and it’s indigenous plants in minute detail. For instance on my first day of weeding out these grasses I started to open out the area and expose beautiful and delicate indigenous orchids and sundews. I felt great joy at giving them some space and light back and ensure their survival from the oppressing weed.

As with all weedy grasses it is best to get them when they are in flower as this makes them very easy to identify. Also it is best to remove the weed before it sets seed to get the best results. Quaking Grass is in full flower during spring but once the weather really warms up into summer the seeds form and set.

Being an annual, Quaking Grass suffered badly after the bushfire in 2009 (how sad!). The seeds in the ground were seriously affected and the following winter after the bushfire we had a greatly reduced amount of this grass returning. With this in mind we made a serious effort in this first year to avoid seeding and hence have pretty much been able to eliminate this weed and all of it’s seed bank from our bush block now.

As with all our weeds Quaking Grass is composted and re-used in our vegetable garden. Again to help reduce our weed load in our vegetable garden we try really hard to get weeds before they seed so that we don’t have too many popping up in the vegetable garden, but it is impossible to always achieve this. We do believe strongly in managing our weeds on-site to avoid spreading the weed problem elsewhere.

Lemon Tree before the bushfire.

Having a lemon tree in the backyard is a really valuable tree for any sustainable garden. Lemons are such a useful fruit. There are a myriad of uses for lemons:

• Food recipes particularly Asian, South American / Mexican, Indian etc
• Drink recipes, cut slices in mixed drinks or added to water. Or made into lemonade or cordial.
• Cleaning, lemon being acidic can sterilise or be used as a bleach.
• Cleaning with lemons also is a great air freshener!

Lemon trees are an easy tree to grow and don’t require much water. Most trees will have fruit most of the year around so there really isn’t much need for preserving lemons for later use. But if keen any excess fruit can be frozen into lemon ice blocks and stored in the freezer. They are also a great give-away item to friends and neighbours if you have too many.

Lemon tree resprouting after bushfire.

Our lemon tree was burnt in the bushfire in February 2009. It had little epicormic shoots coming out from one side (where it was facing the house not the bush) where the bark didn’t get quite as burnt. The epicormic shoots regularly sprouted from about May to December during 2009, the first year after the bushfire. The epicormic shoots would grow for a few weeks and then once they reached about 10cm they just died off.

We weren’t sure our lemon tree would survive as there wasn’t much bark alive allowing the epicormic shoots to grow properly. But now 18 months on our lemon tree has rebounded from a single epicormic growth and has formed a 1 metre shrub with a hard stem. Although it hasn’t developed any flower buds yet we feel hopeful that this will happen within the next year.

A great recipe for lemons is a home made lemon butter.

Erosion control with logs, twigs and leaf litter laid across the slope.

Our block is quite steep and after the bushfire when we had lost all our vegetation cover we had some issues with erosion. The best erosion control is keeping vegetation structure in place from larger trees, to shrubs and groundcovers these all work to hold the soil together. About 3 weeks after the bushfire we had a large rain event and we have never experienced so much soil and ash filling up drains, gutters and just getting washed away.

Erosion from water flow after heavy rainfall still causes some problems even 1.5 years after much of our indigenous vegetation has regrown since the bushfire. To help our bush recover and reduce the impacts of erosion we have ensured that we left any logs and leaf litter on the ground. After the bushfire event there was a reduced amount of logs and leaf litter available as much was burnt.  We collected as much as we could of this resource off neighbours or local council / road authorities who cut trees on road reserves. Many of our neighbours cut down trees after the bushfire, often piling these trees up to be burnt as waste, this ”tidying up” actually increases the chance of erosion.

Logs trap soil, moss acts as a coloniser plant for revegetation.

We still continue to use logs to reduce erosion laying them across the slope to slow down the speed of the water. Some needed to be dug in a litte to help them stabilise. Along with small twigs and leaf litter they collect the soil and any available seeds (many indigenous plants have seeds that survive bushfire) allowing small micro-habitats where revegetation can occur. The logs and leaf litter also provide habitat for small wildlife. On picking up a log I will usually always find ants, beetles, slaters and even skinks, frogs or scorpions. A pity leaf litter and logs, ground habitat, is targetted as a bushfire risk and heavily “tidied” up by many people.

Special outift required to clean up toxic dust from treated pine fencing posts.

We have always been dubious about fencing as unless you really need to keep something in then it also works the other way and keeps other things out. Most particularly where we live fences form barriers for wildlife and can limit their ability to move through their habitat home ranges. As we don’t have ay pets, we chose to live where we do to enjoy the local wildlife, we are quite happy to have no fencing around our property. Although on 2 sides of our boundary our neighbours have fences up to keep in pets or livestock.

We do maintain a fence around our vegetable patch to ensure that the local wildlife don’t eat our human food. We keep our indigenous plants healthy on our bush block to ensure wildlife have their own food too. We maintain our boundary to our property by just having metal stake/pickets to mark the border, but without any wire, wildlife are freely able to move across this boundary. We absolutely would not use any barbed wire this is a really nasty product, totally unnecessary and highly like to injure, humans, livestock, pets or wildlife. Additionally smaller wildlife can be trapped on the barbs often leading to a long slow and painful death.

Since the bushfire in February 2009 we have also become very wary of treated pine posts used in fencing. These are very popular and used widely throughout Australia for fencing and many other uses. After the bushfire event these posts had burnt and left behind piles of green toxic dust, containing nasty chemicals like chromium, copper and arsenic. After the bushfire it was very warm and dusty for 3 weeks until we received some rain and this dust would have been blowing around. This is really scary considering how many thousands of kilometres of fencing was burnt leaving behind toxic dust, who knows where it all ended up!

We quickly ensured we cleaned up and disposed of any toxic soil close to our property. Bagging soil for proper disposal through waste companies who could deal with such nasty chemicals.

The fencing that we do have around our vegetable patch uses recycled untreated (no chemicals) hardwood posts and recycled fencing wire (no barbs). We pick up most of the materials we need for this small amount of fencing off hard waste, the material scraps thrown away by others in our area. Metal posts marking our boundary also survived the bushfire and did not need replacing. I would not recommend that anyone use treated pine anywhere near a food growing area as the chemicals can leach into the soil.

Bush Rat - Rattus fuscipes. Volunteering trap and release program.

We spent the last weekend doing some volunteer work around Lake Mountain near Marysville. The area was severely burnt during the February 2009 bushfires and we joined up with some local Parks Victoria staff to set and bait “Elliot” traps amongst new growth of ground cover plants. The aim was to trap and release to see if we could find some of the rarer small mammals that were previously recorded in these mountain areas and see what had survived the devastating bushfire. We were particularly looking for a threatened species the Broad-toothed Rat - Masacomys fuscus.

Unfortunately on the day we helped out we didn’t find any Broad-toothed Rats but that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there! We did find lots of our native rat more commonly known as the Bush Rat – Rattus fuscipes. This Bush Rat is pretty cute, more softer looking than the introduced Brown and Black rats and have quite a different diet of native vegetation, fungi and insects - whereas the introduced ones eat pretty much anything and everything which can be devastating on the environment.

The native Bush Rat can be easily identified from a Brown or Black rat by the length of their tail, which is shorter than their body length. Brown and Black rats have tails longer than their body length.

We chose to volunteer our time to understand more about the local indigenous plants and wildlife in our local forest. Trapping animals gives us the chance to see animals that we may otherwise never see, as they are generally shy and nocturnal. The Bush Rat habitat relies on having good ground cover vegetation, habitat logs and leaf litter to provide food and shelter. Maybe this is why we also don’t see them on our bush block as many of our neighbours have cleared away their ground cover vegetation, habitat logs and leaf litter reducing the quality of their bush habitat.

Bush Rat in Elliot trap - ready for release.

As we live quite close to this mountain area and being a National Park (state government land) we believe that the land, forest and all it’s animals are the responsibility of all Victorians. It is really up to us to get involved, to find out what is out there and learn how we can continue to look after what we find.

Austrodanthonia pilosa - Velvet Wallaby-grass bush track edging.

Velvet Wallaby-grass - Austrodanthonia pilosa is the most common indigenous wallaby grass species found on our bush block. Wallaby grasses have a tufting base and distinctive fluffy seed heads. They are a very common grass with a number of species found across Australia. They respond well and are found in abundance after a bushfire.

Austrodanthonia pilosa - Velvet Wallaby-grass seed head.

We love the soft and flowing nature of our indigenous grasses and find that they make beautiful edging to the bush tracks that meader through our bush block. The wildlife love to graze on the indigenous grasses and many of the local parrots and ants eat the seeds that they produce. Wallaby grasses also work well as a biodiverse lawn alternative mixed in alongside another common indigenous grass, Weeping Grass – Microlaena stipoides. They can be left as a long flowing lawn or mowed. Mowing is best after seed has ripened and is ready to drop to ensure it continues to regenerate and form a good thick ground cover and avoid weed contamination.

Eucalypt shooting lignotuber growth

Many eucalypt trees are capable of producing 2 different kinds of shoots after a major trauma such as a bushfire, epicormic shoots and lignotuber shoots. Lignotuber shoots are responsible for the tree being able to develop new and sturdy tree trunks. Lignotuber shoots differ from epicormic shoots as they come out from the base of the tree from within the root system itself not out of the bark on the trunk and are a more long term healing solution for the tree.

Lignotuber shoots will often be the long term healing solution for the tree as they can eventually form new and very strong tree trunks. A characteristic of a lignotuber producing eucalypt that has gone through a trauma event such as bushfire is that it has multi stems from the base, sometimes upto 5 or more main trunks.

We have decided to see how nature plays out and can’t wait to to see if some trees do form multi-stems on our bush block. If this is something that you don’t want, particularly if it was around your house and very visual it is possible to remove some of the lignotuber stems to get the tree to form one good soild trunk – which some people find more appealing. Something like cut them back to about 5-10 main lignotuber stems after a year and then down to 2-5 main stems after 2 or so years and then finally pick the best stem which you want to become your new trunk.