Day
1: Thursday 20 April ( Reported by Donalda Rogers)
Six vehicles lined up outside Chinchilla Tourist Park at 8.00am ready
for a full day in the Barakula State Forest. There were 20 members of Toowoomba
Field Nats and four members of Chinchilla Nats. UHF’s were tuned to Channel 21
ready for the excellent running commentary by leader Frank Truscott on the many
sites and plants of interest along the way.
As we turned north towards Barakula on the Auburn Road, Frank pointed
out where the old Tramway used to be as well as a closed sawmill and derelict
brickworks. Further on was a working sawmill which originally only took Cypress
Pine but now includes Spotted Gum.
Just before the southern boundary of the Barakula State Forest we drove
through the Dingo Barrier Fence – the world’s longest. It stretches 5,614
kilometres from Jimbour on the Darling Downs through the inland, ending west of
Eyre Peninsula on the cliffs of the Nullarbor Plain above the great Australian
Bight.
At the
Barakula Forestry Office area Frank gave us a short talk on the history of the
area. Travelling on, our first “Botanical Stop” was to look at Grevillea singuliflora, which was very
interesting. The other plant that caught our eye here was the Woody Pear. What
was fascinating was the young plant with its notched leaves, as contrasting
with the “adult” plant that had no notches.
The
landscape looked a little odd where we passed through an area where they had
been thinning the cypress, with stumps as tall as the grass, but only a few
centimetres in diameter. Morning tea was enjoyed at the base of the Waaje fire
tower. Sadly, the presence of asbestos has caused the tower to be closed. It is
39 metres high and the single poles for
the legs were brought from the coast. The trees in this area were Corymbia watsoniana.
Moving on we stopped at the Waaje flower area for photographers to enjoy
a Mistletoe, before moving to an aboriginal site where handprints were still
visible under a sandstone overhang. Leaving this area we travelled along the
road to where the Auburn Range meets the Great Dividing Range, at the junction
of the Fitzroy, Burnett, and Murray-Darling catchments.
Lunch was in the Waaje Wild Flower area where the only
tree with any shade was Eucalyptus
pachycalyx subsp. waajensis, the
same place where the Australian Naturalists Network get together was held in
2010. Our next stop was Smith Creek crossing where we sighted a few birds
including Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos. Moving on, we stopped at the
Wongongera Yards, a large set of stockyards built originally out of whole and
split logs, with no nails, bolts, or wire used. It was used to collect cattle
from the runs to the north before drov-ing them to Chinchilla. (As the yards
deteriorated they were patched up with fencing wire and old railway sleepers.) There
were several good examples of sliprail gate. At one end the rails are loosely
held in mortises in the gatepost. At the other end, the gatepost has an
L-shaped slot for each rail. The rail can be slid in sideways, and then drops
down the vertical part of the slot. A peg through the rail then stops it from
being moved up and out again. A scarlet honeyeater was sighted here. Our final
stop was to look at Acacia chinchillensis
and Dodonaea macrossanii. A truly
wonderful day. Thank you, Frank.
Day 2: Friday, 21
April - Nangram ( Report by Julie Latham)
On a lovely
sunny day, we departed for our day out via Chinchilla Weir where many darters,
spoonbills and egrets were fishing along the weir overflow. Some good viewing.
Our convoy was nine cars. We travelled south onto the Condamine Highway turning
west and arriving at Nangram about 9.00am. We were met by Randall Coggan,
Manager of Nangram, at the big work-shop shed. The major point of interest was
the beautiful lagoon not far from the homestead, with its wonderful picnic
area. Francis and Hugh Tilly also joined us at the shed. The Tilly Family are
the previous owners of Nangram.
Nangram
covers 20,000 acres and is now owned by McDonald Holdings, (purchased in 2014)
and is a large, privately owned cattle operation, centred on Cloncurry, in
western Qld. The McDonald family are involved in setting aside an area on one
of their northern properties, to protect and research the Night Parrot, which
has been found there. Trading cattle are bred in the top end and moved down to
Nangram and three other properties owned by MDH, to be finished in their
9000-head feed lot. There are seven centre pivots supplying irrigated feed for
the feed lot. The irrigation pipes were purchased from Mary Kathleen.
Over morning
tea Francis gave us a run through of the history of the property since their
purchase in 1964. They moved to Toowoomba in 1988. Nangram was then managed by
their sons. Many Chinchilla CFN mem-bers remember the beautiful lotus, which
grew along both sides of the lagoon. Water skiing and canoeing were very
popular during these years. Francis showed us lovely photos she had taken in
those early years. The seeds germinate in the mud, and seeds and roots are
edible and taste a bit like corn.
The lagoon
is filled from the Condamine River via a ring tank and during the 1983 flood
defoliant from the cotton farms washed into the lagoon and the lotus slowly
died over the next two years. They did reappear but during the floods of
2010/11 and 2013 they were under water for a long period. Although the water is
now free of cotton run-off the lotus has not regenerated. Seeds can stay viable
for up to 15 years but, to date none have germinated. There is a thought that
European carp fish are muddying up the bottom of the lagoon and maybe there is
not enough light for the seed to germinate. We had a very enjoyable walk around
the lagoon, bird watching etc. and returned for a very enjoyable lunch.
Condamine Couch at Nangram ( Observations by Trish Gardner)
During their period at Nangram, the Tilly family developed the very
attractive picnic area where we enjoyed both morning tea and lunch. Our
interest was caught by the dense lawn-like groundcover, a plant known as
Condamine couch Phyla canescens. It is also known as Lippia or Condamine
curse.
Having grown up near the Condamine, I can remember when the plant was
introduced to the district. My fam-ily’s Oakey dentist and his wife were keen
gardeners, and attracted much interest in the 1950's with one of the first
Condamine couch lawns. It was much admired as a no-mow lawn, except by me and
my three brothers, who wanted to play on it while our siblings were being
drilled and filled. We rapidly discovered that its pretty little lantana-like
flowers were very appealing to bees!
Condamine couch has gone on to become a serious environmental and
pastoral weed in Queensland. It spreads down waterways and in floods, and the
seed is also carried by birds. It is found in isolated melon holes which never
see flood, and even in cattle hoofprints and wheel ruts which contain water for
a short period. It takes over good grazing land, and causes serious riverbank
and gully erosion because its shallow roots don’t have the soil-holding
qualities of the plants it smothers out. Of equal concern to pastoralists and
nature lovers, it has lowered both grazing productivity and biodiversity in the
Murray-Darling, Burnett, Fitzroy and Swan River Catchments. Its close relative,
Phyla nodiflora has had a similar effect across the Top End and down the
coasts to Sydney and Perth.
Botanist Matt MacDonald, who did his doctorate on it, has described it
as “the worst weed west of the Great Divide”. One still sees both these plants
for sale, recommended as waterwise lawn substitutes for gardens. What to do
about it? Some landholders eliminate it, but with considerable effort, as the
seeds can last for years. It will always re-invade, though. Others (like the
Nangram owners) decide to just live with it, and make use of it as we saw on
our outing there.
Corduroy Road near
Nangram, Friday 21 April (Reflections by Ben
Gundry)
Cobb and Co
started coaching services in 1853 in early Gold Rush days in Victoria and
spread across much of Colonial Australia, initially following the big business
of serving the needs of the diggings. (food, supplies, gold transport, Royal
Mail contracts, etcetera). It moved into other areas of spreading settlement in
the post- Gold Rush era – which is more the case in Cobb and Co’s services
commencing in areas to the west of Dalby in 1867, but being gradually replaced
as railways spread westwards. Rail reached Roma in 1880, but the Western Line
bypassed Condamine, so horse-drawn carriage services persisted in such areas,
linking to the rail-head towns. The last Cobb and Co service in Australia
closed in 1924 – Yuleba to Surat.
To ensure
service in low-lying, flood-prone areas, “corduroy roads” were built, like what
we saw near Nan-gram, where Cypress trunks were laid over banked earth, and
have resisted the ravages of time, floods and white ants for almost 150 years.
This corduroy section is close to the current highway to Condamine and was
probably only used for 40 years or so, as changes were made with the advent of
motor transport. Once Conda-mine was bypassed, the newer towns of Miles and
Chinchilla developed as the region’s major service centres.
The etymological origins of “corduroy”:
There is a
popular misconception (to which I have been victim, until this recent
revelation) that the word “corduroy” is French in origin. Instead, it has
regional English roots – CORD (ribbed fabric) + DUROY (light-weight worsted).
Extra cut-pile yarn was worked into the weave to produce a raised profile
fabric, with the ridges being called “wales”. This cloth had two special
properties that made it popular in Britain and North America in the
early-to-mid 1700s – it was warm and it dried quickly. While it had been called
corduroy, it was sold to the masses as “Manchester cloth”, with the rise of the
Industrial Revolution.
When the cloth became more soft and velvety in the
late-1700s, it was again branded as Corduroy (with a sug-gested association
with French nobility!) to market the new product to the wealthier classes in
Britain. Now to “corduroy roads”. While
these roads have been built as far back as Roman times, and possibly earlier,
it is the Colonial Americans who first used this term, borrowing from the
fabric’s profile, in the early 1700s, for their road-building in swampy areas.
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| Nats and Corduroy Road (Photo: Jean Gundry) |
My Birding Moment of
the Camp - Friday 21 April at Nangram Lagoon
(By Ben Gundry)
It was a
privilege to see what might have been two dozen Plum-headed finches, in the
tall seed-heads of the green panic, fairly close to the lagoon’s waters. (I
think that most of my previous Plum-head experiences have been to see just a
few of them interspersed with other finch species – especially Double-bars and
Zebras.)
My ”voyeur”
experience arrived when a male in full fresh colour flew to a female on a
fallen branch but above the grasses,, with a dried grass stalk, twice his own
body length, held vertically in his beak. On alighting beside her, he began an
exaggerated head-bobbing ritual, emphasised by the movement of that grass stalk
in his beak. This was repeated, whereupon she flew six to seven meters away and
he followed attentively.
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| Chestnut breasted Mannikins |
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| Plum-headed Finch |
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| Lotus and pontoon |
(Photos by Jean Gundry)
Day 3: Saturday, 22
April - Barakula State Forest – eastern section. ( Report by Deb Ford)
Our outing to
the eastern section of the Barakula State Forest commenced at 8.00am with Frank
Truscott, our energetic and knowledgeable Chinchilla Field Nats guide, leading
a convoy of seven cars. Two CFN members, Harold Rennick and Denver Kanowski,
joined us for the day travelling with Deb and Mike Ford, who enjoyed gleaning
additional local information from them.
Our route
took us up the Auburn Road, through the Dingo Fence (did you hear the
whistle?), driving through mixed forest that included Bulloak (Casuarina luehmannii) and Cyprus Pine (Callitris endlicheri and/or Callitris glaucophylla). Our first stop
was Stockyard Creek where we clambered up a dry creek bed to look at old
Aboriginal grinding grooves in the sandstone boulders. From there we drove to a
WWII Italian internee camp. Although little of the camp remains, we could
identify the log border of a bocce rink, and a tent-rig timber pallet floor.
Kapunn
Brigalow Scrub was our next destination and our lunch venue. Here knowledgeable
Nats were able to identify a number of vine scrub plants, and were interested
to see the pretty Native Plumbago (Plumbago
zeylanica) in its natural environment. Our lunch break was followed by a
bumpy drive to the summit of Turkey Mountain, the road having been constructed
by Italian internees during WWII. From the top of the mountain we had a damp
and chilly 360o view over the vast Barakula State Forest. From here
we were taken to see a small patch of Acacia
handonis, a distinct species of Acacia identified by Chinchilla resident,
the late Val Hando, and for whom it is named. Over her life Ms Hando acquired
substantial knowledge about inland south east Queens-land flora and published
books and articles on the subject.
Ballon Forest
Office, which closed in 1986, was our penultimate stop. After its closure, it
was taken over by Toowoomba’s Concordia College as an outdoor education centre,
but this too has now closed. The future of the buildings, including a church, a
school and various dwellings is unknown.
The distinctive Chinchilla White Gum (Eucalyptus argophloia) originated in an
area roughly 30x10 kilometres north east of Chinchilla township. Our route back
‘home’ took us past several stands of this attractive tree in its home range
where, due to land clearing for agriculture, it is now listed as vulnerable. During
the day, there were many other wayside stops to look at specimens of botanical
interest, identified by Frank in his initial recce of the area. His knowledge,
energy, enthusiasm, and sense of humour made him an outstanding guide.
Toowoomba Field Nats consider themselves very privileged to have benefitted
from his expertise and friendship. Our trip ended at 5.30pm.
Last
Day of the Camp: Sunday 23 April (Report by Sandy
Eastoe)
After
farewelling several of our number we headed off in our car convoy at 8.35am for
the garden of Heather and John Mason. Here we had a couple of hours admiring
the many native and exotic species co-existing in an acreage of ground cover,
shrub, trees, fruit trees and vegetables in this impressive collection. They
have been grown in the last five years from transported cuttings and graftings.
Interspersed were sculptures using farm machinery, wood, corrugated iron and
driftwood. What an impressive display, and monument to this talented, hard-working,
and knowledgeable couple. Thank you.
Morning tea on the verandah was a time of
tip sharing. John showed us his Brigalow and Cypress house panel-ing, and
coffee tables carved from box in collaboration with Harold Rennick.
We then
visited Chinchilla Weir for a very interesting couple of hours watching rich
and varied bird life. Our enthusiastic photographers had many opportunities to
capture the feeding techniques of pelicans, egrets, and darters, among others.
Crows and kite hawks disputed territory overhead. Charley’s Creek was our
rendezvous for a relaxed lunch, before departing.
Plants
at Barakula State Forest (Trish
Gardner – article and photo)
(E)=endangered; (V)=vulnerable; (NT)=near threatened
The problem with Barakula is not so much it’s trackless, as that there
are too many tracks. It would be too easy to get lost, and far too easy to fail
to find any of its special plants. Thanks to Frank Truscott of the Chinchilla
Field Nats, we had an efficiently guided tour, taking us to most of the Forest’s
points of interest. Even so, it took a very full two days.
Barakula was, in the past, a rich source of cypress (Callitris glauca)
for house building. Now only a small area is still managed as cypress forestry.
Frank showed us one of these areas, and we could see how the trees were
thinned, so as to encourage the remaining trees to make their best growth as
tall, straight timber trees. We also travelled through Eucalyptus/Corymbia
forests of various kinds including spotted gum, Corymbia citriodora
subsp. variegata, which is now the most commonly cut timber in the
forest.
Our attention was also caught by the rough,
bright, orange-yellow bark of the two species of yellow jacket, Corymbia
bloxsomei and C. watsoniana, and Frank took us to see a small stand
of the very rare Waaje gum, Eucalyptus pachycalyx subsp. waajensis
(E). This subspecies became separated from the main population of E.
pachycalyx at some time in the distant past, and has evolved into a
distinct clade. We also saw the rare woolly gum E. rubiginosa and
Plunkett mallee E. curtisii (N).
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A rare stand of naturally occurring
white gums (Eucalyptus argofoloia) |
The rare Grevillea singuliflora
took us by surprise, with its very un-grevillea-like leaves. Nearby another
member of the Proteaceae family, the woody pear Xylomel-um cunninghamianum,
grew thickly. Several of the pear’s “clothes peg” fruits were found.
We saw a good selection of Barakula’s 32 different
species of wattle. Several them were responding to the recent rain by bursting
into bloom. Acacia conferta and A. complanata were gloriously in
flower, and a number of others were in bud. A. barakulensis (V) and A.
handonis (V) exist nowhere else but in this small area north of Chinchilla,
and the range of the rare A. chinchillensis and A. tenuinervis is
not much broader.
To add to
our list of rare plants seen, Frank took us to the yellow calytrix, Calytrix
gurulmundensis, a rare and rather surprising prostrate hopbush Dodonaea
macrossanii, and a prostrate mouse bush, Homoranthus decum-bens (V).
The Chinchilla Nats had feared that this small population of the latter had
been destroyed by fires a few years ago, so it was a delight to see that it had
bounced back. It was not the main flowering season, but we
found plenty of flowers, in all colours of the rainbow, to keep us
happy.
Saturday lunchtime saw us enjoying a completely different kind of
vegetation at Kapunn Brigalow Scrub, where the Brigalow trees Acacia
harpophylla found themselves amongst dense low forest of dry rainforest
species. Most were recognised from the scrubs around Toowoomba, but we were
particularly pleased to find the shiny-leafed tarenna, Triflorensia
ixoroides (Tarenna triflora), which doesn’t occur at home.
Our Barakula experience ended with a diversion to see some roadside
Chinchilla white gums Eucalyptus argo-phloia (V). This is a familiar
plant to many of us, despite its rarity in the wild, as it has become popular
as a timber plantation tree. Somehow, it looked more beautiful in its own natural
habitat.
All in all, we had a very good taste of Barakula’s
simply amazing diversity of plants. Thank you, Frank.
Egrets galore near
Chinchilla (By Neil
McKilligan)
Rather than go bush (Barakula S.F.)
with the ‘gang’ on the first full day of the Nats. Camp Helen and I opted for a
leisurely look at wetlands a short distance from the township. Until we came to
the weir on the Condamine River the bird life was unremarkable, but more of
that later. It might be mentioned that each wetland got only a quick look and
land birds were largely ignored.
First stop was Old Man Lagoon to the
north of the town. A very pretty body of shallow (I guessed) water. Both
Straw-necked and White Ibises were there and a Yellow-billed Spoonbill sluicing
its bill through the muddy water. Obviously, a tactile feeder! A Little Egret
and a gaggle of Duckus domesticus completed the complement of
water birds. The nearby Round Waterhole yielded only a Darter. West of town a
few kilometres Rocky Creek had no water birds.
Our last stop, at the Chinchilla Weir,
took our breath away. What a sight to behold!! In excess of 50 snowy white
egrets. Many standing along the top of the dam, others more centrally at the
lowest point where the water coursed over the spillway and some at the bottom
where it discharged to form a river again.
These were mostly Great Egrets with a
smattering of Little Egrets. No Cattle or Intermediates were seen. The Little
Egret was easily distinguished by its black bill and much smaller size. This
was a great opportunity to contrast their sizes as they stood side by side.
They were apparently feeding on fish which would have been very exposed
in the shallow stream over the dam. Only one bird (a Little Egret) was actually
seen with a fish, scissored between its mandibles. In our region, these birds
tend to be solitary feeders, reflecting the sparse distribution of their prey.
However, in this instance prey density and availability would have favoured a
‘feeding frenzy’,
Pelican Flotilla -
Sunday 23 April, Chinchilla Weir (By Ben
Gundry)
We arrived at
the weir at about 11.00am and I was aware of a number of pelicans sky-writing
high above the water, with one beginning a spiralling descent to the waterways
distantly opposite our vantage point. Within a couple of minutes, all the
pelicans were on the water and rafting up for their precision-probing pursuit
of pisces. Later I counted 27 in the fleet. This ultimately lasted about an
hour, perhaps even continuing after we departed. Even at distance, we could see
that the pelicans were doing well – let alone their black cormorant attendants
who were lunging ahead of the pack, until they met with success, when they had
to spend much longer with each dispatch than the pelicans took with theirs. Closer
in, we were aware of much the same shorebirds around the spillway as seen on
Friday. Of note was a white ibis which had joined the fisher-folk and was
stalking the shallows, with some success – twice seen to be doing away with a
little fish.
Birds at Chincilla Weir - photos by Jean Gundry
Bird Lists for
Chinchilla Camp: (Compiled by Tricia Allen)
Caravan Park, Two day trips to Barakula State Forest,
Nangram, Chinchilla Weir and Mason’s garden.
Gull-billed Tern, Masked
Lapwing, Black-fronted Dotterel, Plumed Whistling Duck, Australian Wood Duck,
Grey Teal, Pacific Black Duck, Little Pied Cormorant, Little Black Cormorant,
Australian Darter, Pelican, White-faced Heron, White-necked Heron, Great Egret,
Little Egret, Royal Spoonbill, Australian White Ibis, Straw-necked Ibis,
Eurasian Coot, Wedgetail Eagle, White-bellied Sea Eagle, Whistling Kite,
Peaceful Dove, Spotted Turtledove, Bar-shouldered Dove, Crested Pigeon,
Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo, Galah, Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Little Corella,
Rainbow Lorikeet, Little Lorikeet, Scaly-breasted Lorikeet, Red-winged Parrot,
Red-rumped Parrot, Pale-headed Rosella, Cockatiel, Laughing Kookaburra, Welcome
Swallow, White-throated Treecreeper, Superb Fairy Wren, White-browed Scrubwren,
Brown Thornbill, Weebill, Striated Pardalote, Spotted Pardalote, Lewin’s
Honeyeater, White-plumed Honeyeater, Yellow-faced Honeyeater, Yellow-tufted
Honeyeater, Brown Honeyeater, Spiny-cheeked Honeyeater, Blue-faced Honeyeater,
Scarlet Honeyeater, Noisy Miner, Little Wattlebird, Striped Honeyeater, Noisy
Friarbird, Grey-crowned Babbler, Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike, White-bellied
Cuckoo-shrike, Rufous Whistler, Golden Whistler, Grey Butcherbird, Pied
Butcherbird, Pied Currawong, Australian Magpie, Torresian Crow, Magpie Lark,
Willy Wagtail, Apostlebird, Grey Fantail, Restless Flycatcher, Eastern Yellow
Robin, Australian Reed Warbler, Mistletoe Bird, Chestnut-breasted Mannikin,
Plum-headed Finch, Double-barred Finch, Red-browed Finch, Indian Myna. 81 species
Nangram Lagoon: Grey Teal, Australian
Wood Duck, White-necked Heron, Eurasian Coot, Masked Lapwing, Whistling Kite,
Wedgetail Eagle, Peaceful Dove, Crested Pigeon, Galah, Sulphur-crested
Cockatoo, Pale-headed Rosella, Red-rumped Parrot, Cockatiel, Laughing
Kookaburra, Welcome Swallow, Superb Fairywren, Striated Pardalote,
Yellow-tufted Honeyeater, Spiny-cheeked Honeyeater, White-plumed Honeyeater,
Noisy Miner, Grey Butcherbird, Pied Butcher-bird, Willy Wagtail, Apostlebird,
Australian Reed-Warbler, Mistletoe Bird, Chestnut-breasted Mannikin,
Plum-headed Finch, Red-browed Finch.
