Warrnambool Coastcare Landcare Group

SUMMER 2011 NEWSLETTER

Welcome to the Summer 2011 Warrnambool Coastcare Landcare Group newsletter. I hope the festive break gave everyone a chance to relax and enjoy all the things our beautiful coast has to offer. 

2010 was a year difficult year for our group, with the tragic passing of Coastcare Facilitator John Amor in January and then the devastating loss of our beloved leader Don McTaggart on 9^th December. Don and John were both great champions of the environment and we were blessed to have shared in their passion, wisdom and friendship. A tribute to Don can be found on page 7.

It has also been a time of great change for us, with a new-look Committee voted in at our Annual General Meeting at the 3WAY FM Rooms on 2nd November 2010. It was with some sadness that we saw the retirement of long-serving financial guru Frank Wiggins from the position of Treasurer, and the fabulous Ann Park from her position as Secretary. We thank Frank and Ann for their efforts in keeping our group strong over the years, and look forward to continuing to pick their brains for many more! Our new WCLG Committee looks a little something like this:

Group Leader:                       Kristie King

Deputy Leader:                     Lisette Mill

Treasurer/Public Officer:    Nick Glover

Assistant Treasurer:             Bill Douglas

Secretary:                             Trish Corbett

Secretarial Team:                Ann Park, Brendan McDonald, Kate McInnes and Lisette Mill

Website Coordinators:        Craig McTaggart and Mark Gravolen

Trailer Coordinators:           Sam Tuck, Marty Gent and Kate McInnes 

Public Officer:                      Nick Glover

A big thankyou to these members who have stepped up to help. Your dedication is commendable and greatly appreciated. This year will also see a slight change in personnel for two of our major projects. Harris on Merri Revegetation will now be headed up by Ann Park, Sam Tuck, Marty Gent and Kate McInnes, while the Penguin Monitoring Program will be overseen by Kristie King, Chris Drummond, John Sutherland, Nick Glover, Trish Corbett and Brendan McDonald. Rebecca Corbett will continue her great work as Coordinator of the Weed Warrior Program.

Hi there . . .

Hi! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Kristie and I’ve stepped in as WCLG Leader following the retirement and tragic passing of Don McTaggart. Big shoes to fill, I know! I’ve been involved with the group for eight years and have been most active since 2006 as coordinator of the Middle Island Penguin Monitoring Program. My big passion is biodiversity conservation and I am so proud to be involved with a group of people so dedicated to protecting and improving biodiversity in our neck of the woods.

Warrnambool Coastcare Landcare Group is a dynamic group of forward-thinking people and it is a real honour to be able to help steer the group’s direction into the future. I may do things differently to Don but I share his admiration and affection for WCLG, and look forward to hearing everyone’s ideas about how we can continue to improve our local environment. If you have any thoughts on how we can grow, or on anything else, please feel free to email me or give me a call on 0431 057 741.

Free Counselling Support

Don’s passing has dealt a huge blow to our group and some people may feel the need to talk through their grief with someone they can trust. DSE provides a free and confidential counselling service to Coastcare volunteers with professional counsellor Petra Becker. Bookings can be made by calling Petra on 1300 360 364.

Summer’s Finally Here!

The belated return of the warm weather has heralded the start of Summer and that means just one thing – Summer By The Sea activities! As always, DSE will be throwing a fabulous bash across the State to give us a chance to connect with and learn about our coastline. Our group will be involved in a number of activities, including the Middle Island Maremma Interpretive Tours from 10^th – 14^th January and the Friday Night Market at Lake Pertobe on the 14^th of January. Let me know if you would like to help man the WCLG stall at Lake Pertobe – fun and good company are guaranteed! WCLG will also be joining with the Southwest Bird Observers Club to host a series of free bird-watching tours around Lake Pertobe. The tours often encounter up to thirty bird species and are a great family activity. Tours run on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 11^th – 20^th January. Meet at Lake Pertobe, opposite the easternmost milk bar at 10:30am. For more information on the bird tours call Peter Blake on 55 620536.

Summer By The Sea Festival

DSE’s Summer By The Sea festival kicked off on Monday 3^rd January with a heap of coastal activities for the community to enjoy and to help raise awareness of coastal and marine issues. At this time of year, it’s a wonderful opportunity for people to get involved and have some fun in the sunshine. There’s something for everyone this January, with 300 free events available all along the coast. Activities suit all ages, and most are free including rockpool rambles, guided walking tours, beachcombing, boat trips, kayaking, bird-watching and fishing lessons.

Activities available in the Warrnambool area include:

• ·       Rockpool Ramble – with a Parks Victoria Ranger
• ·       Coast Action Out and About – Tai Chi by the Sea
• ·       Meet the Middle Island Maremma dogs
• ·       Kayak the Coast - Merri River

The summer festival is run by the DSE’s Coast Action/Coastcare program with the ongoing support of volunteers and local experts. Partners include Birds Australia, Warrnambool Coastcare Landcare, Glenelg Hopkins CMA and Parks Victoria.

Marty Gent.

Warrnambool City Council Environment Team Update

The WCC Environment Team started work in October this year. So far their focus has been on McGennan's Carpark and of course getting the Maremmas onto Middle Island. They have also been hard at it managing the vegetation along the entire foreshore, attending to reveg sites and repairing beach accesses after the Winter/Spring storms. They have worked with the local Greencorp Team and completed back breaking work with the redesign of the beach access at Point Ritchie (and have told me they will never work with gabion baskets again!). Their work with pest animal control has been fantastic, with involvement in the volunteer shoot (shooting foxes, not volunteers!) around Stingray Bay and the capture of five foxes at Flagstaff Hill.

Rachael Harrison and Justin Harzmeyer also had a visit to Portland’s Point Danger where Dave Williams showed them around the Cape Gannet colony and instructed them in the finer points of Maremma training . . . and getting Council cars bogged! Apart from keeping RACV busy, the activities of the Environment Team will also be instrumental in helping Warrnambool City Council keep the foreshore precinct safe and healthy for us all to enjoy.

Kate McInnes.

Middle Island Maremma Project

Well the dogs are finally on the Island and with great success. Due to the
excellent training and exposure to the island when the dogs were pups, the
transition to sleepovers has been relatively smooth now that they are all
grown up. The Environment Team has worked hard to get the boardwalk up to the standard of accommodation that the dogs are used to. This has included completing the 'wiring in' of the boardwalk, building temporary kennels and shady areas, gates for access on and off the boardwalk and escape exits for the shearwaters if they happen to land on the boardwalk.

Thanks to the Environment Team for putting in extra hours monitoring the dogs when sleepovers first started. Appreciation also to Greencorp for their assistance with the boardwalk works. Much thanks goes to Chris Drummond for all his work with the dogs and to Pontings Hardware for supplying some of the materials. Thanks also to Petstock Warrnambool for their generous support in supplying dog food. Currently the dogs are staying on the island for a few days during the week and going back to Lake Gillear for some respite on weekends.

Maremma Tours (Middle Island Interpretive Talks) are on every day from the 10^th – 14^th January as part of the Summer By the Sea Festival. Please note that bookings are essential and can be made on 55 594615. Tours kick off from the Foreshore Pavilion at 9:00am. Also on Saturday 22^nd and 29^th of January, Conservation Volunteers Australia are running two more interpretive tours over to Middle Island, hoping to capture some more locals. If you're interested in volunteering to help run any of the tours please contact me on 55 594800.

Kate McInnes.

Middle Island Penguin Monitoring 

The Penguin Monitoring Program has been going gang-busters this season, with record numbers of penguins (and volunteers) keeping the new team run off their feet! The season started with a bang, when 109 Little Penguins were recorded in October returning to the island to renovate burrows, mate, incubate eggs and feed chicks. As our one-hour surveys only capture approximately 60% of birds returning to the island, we can deduce that the island is now providing breeding habitat for around 180 adult penguins – a substantial increase on the handful of birds recorded in 2005!

We then had a lovely Christmas surprise in December when we counted 104 birds, a tally on par with our earlier record. This second peak backs up our hunch that some pairs have laid two clutches of eggs this season, i.e. "double brooding". This is a relatively uncommon phenomenon in penguins and indicates that the colony has access to good food availability and is going strong. These figures are backed up by results of the breeding monitoring program, in which we collect data about the number of eggs, chicks and fledglings in the colony. The breeding monitoring team has recorded lots and lots of eggs and fluffy little chicks, indicating that breeding success is relatively high. Thanks to effect of the Maremma Project in preventing fox predation, it seems that the colony is well on the way to recovery! A big thank you must go to the dedicated volunteers who have helped over the season, particularly Chris Drummond, John Sutherland, Trish Corbett, Nick Glover and Brendan McDonald.

After five-odd years of collecting information about the colony, we now have quite a substantial task on our hands trying to collate and analyse our data. I’m looking to put together a ‘data collation team’ who can give a bit of time to help us get on top of it. This would suit uni students who'd like to get a bit of data management experience or pretty much anyone who's familiar with Excel. It would involve a quick training session and then perhaps half an hour of work depending on how much interest we get. If you're keen let me know and we can organise a bit of training. And as always, send me an email if you’d like to get involved with the counts.

Kristie King.

Sustainable Living Expo

The Sustainable Living Expo was held on the Civic Green on Saturday 8^th January. The expo, which was a joint initiative of WCC’s Sustain The Bool Program, Bunnings, Wannon Water and The Standard, featured information on all facets of sustainable living and included presentations from Rob Gell and the perennially popular John Sherwood. Captain Sustain The Bool was also there, resplendent as always in his lycra suit. The day was a great success with lots of people turning out to learn about local organic produce and ways to reduce their ecological footprint.

Harris On Merri Update

Thanks to all who attended the session to honour Don, in his true spirit a lot was done, and I'm sure it's the way he would like us to be remembering him in the future – by getting stuck in!

The Harris On Merri site can't wait, and will welcome us back with open arms. We'll be greeted by some really great natives - the Poas are amazing! Unfortunately, some species are starting to get a little crowded in spots by mature weeds which have set seed and really need to come out; so I think this should be the first priority of the first few groups on the roster to tackle. There will be a dab brush with Round Up in the bucket under my house to cut and paint the ones which won't pull out. Try to be gentle with them to reduce seed drop on their way out. Thanks again to Kate and the Council crew who come and clean up the mounds of undesirables.

As agreed, a new approach to any weeding should involve re-mulching the area to prevent new ones having a chance to establish. A load of pine bark mulch will be delivered soon, and if possible, I will have them dump it in two convenient spots. A wheelbarrow will be tied up at my place too, to enable easy transport of the mulch around the site, so whenever some weeding goes on, please cover the area with about 100mm of the mulch. The renewed beds could do with a top up too to keep them in good nic. It'll be great to get back in there after such a great growing season to see what's done well and to give a helping hand.

Sam Tuck.

The new Harris On Merri working bee schedule (left) has been put together to give everyone a chance to get involved; so whether you prefer Saturdays or Sundays, enjoy a sleep-in or are more of an early bird, there should hopefully be a date to suit you. We also have the option of organising working bees during the week if enough people are interested.

Upcoming Events

Our first meeting for the year will be held on Tuesday 1^st February at 7:30pm at the 3WAY FM Rooms at 71 Hyland Street. Our guest speaker will be Peter Robertson, Director of City Infrastructure for the Warrnambool City Council, who will be speaking about the ins and outs of water management in Warrnambool. All are welcome.

Sunday 6^th March will be National Clean Up Australia Day. Among other events around the region, WCLG will be holding a ‘Clean Up The Merri By Kayak’ day to help improve water quality in the river, while also having a bit of fun. More details closer to the date.

On Tuesday 8^th March, WCLG will be hosting a stall at the Deakin University Student Union (DUSA) Clubs and Information Market Day. We will require volunteers to man the stall from 10:00am – 2:00pm. Please let me know if you’d like to help out to recruit new members.