Pencil and paper bring plants into focus at Bracken Creek
The wattles of the Wurundjeri season of Guling were bursting into colour as fourteen members of the newly formed Friends of Bracken Creek put down their trowels and trays of tube stock to pick up tools they were far less familiar with – pencils and paper.
“Some people were a bit reluctant at first,” says group founder Melanie Del Monaco. “They thought they couldn’t draw.”
The sentiment is a familiar one to environmental educator Angela Foley from Merri Creek Management Committee, who facilitated the learning and is used to giving participants time to recognise themselves as both artists and scientists.
“I meet people all the time, whether they are six or 60, who think that artists are a different kind of people,” says Angela. “But drawing is about being observant. Your drawing is data – a record of what you observed of a specific plant at a specific day and time.”
Friends of Bracken Creek planting day, along the Merri Merri in Northcote
Melbourne Water rejoins Merri Creek Management Committee
Vix Penko (Melbourne Water) and Shaun Leane MP
After 25 years living in Melbourne, Victoria Penko couldn’t imagine the city without the Merri Creek.
“Well, there’s no Melbourne without the Merri Creek, is there?” she laughs. As Head of Waterway and Catchment Services North West for Melbourne Water, Victoria describes Merri Creek Management Committee as “a pioneering trail-blazer in collaborative waterway management”. With these sentiments in mind, it was a “no-brainer” to rejoin as an MCMC member organisation last month, an announcement which MCMC President Ann McGregor describes as “a very welcome move.”
The boy who loved frogs
As Dr Brendan Casey sits at his desk, the beautiful and eerie calls of the Growling Grass Frog coming from his computer take him back to the banks of the Merri Creek where he spent childhood days exploring with wonder. The passion born from those early days drives him through the laborious process of manually working through 20,000 frog call recordings gathered over three years of research.
Brendan grew up near the Merri Creek, at a time when native frogs – including Growling Grass Frogs – were abundant. Several decades later, with the Growling Grass Frog listed as vulnerable at both national and state levels, Brendan returned to the area to undertake a monitoring project that would lead to improved understanding of the environmental conditions that affect the frogs’ call activity.
Healing Country at Amberfield Grasslands
Matt Tudor stands surrounded by grasses in the Amberfield Grasslands Reserve, Craigieburn, in Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung country. In his hands he holds a wand attached to what looks like a jerry can – the apparatus is known as a “fire bug” and its design is informed by the firestick, a traditional tool used by Indigenous Australians.
Matt has visited these grasslands tens of times in the eighteen months he’s been contributing to its management as a team leader in Merri Creek Management’s ecological restoration team. He’s seen the place change through seasons and years – and he’s seen how the grasslands respond to the program of annual ecological burning, which we deliver on behalf of Hume City Council.
How one woman helped to grow a nature-loving community
Helping the Merri Creek to heal helped Arjumand Khan form a new community – and in doing so, she's inspired hundreds to learn through the tactile experience of nature.
Arjumand Khan was pushing a pram past a noticeboard on her daily walk as a new arrival from India in 2006, when something on the noticeboard caught her attention. In the pram, her tiny baby slept soundly. A flyer on the noticeboard invited mothers of small children to join a local walking group.
As Arjumand walked the streets of Fawkner and along the Merri Creek, the walking group lingered in her mind. She was a new mother in a new country, without a network to support her through early motherhood. Her walks in nature along the Merri Creek gave her solace, but she yearned for community.
My place: Jane Miller
My place: a Q&A with the people who love and protect the Merri
Favourite spot on the Merri Creek?
My two favourite spots are bababi marning and galgi ngarrk native grassland reserves. These places feel far-removed from urban Melbourne, even with the city skyline on the horizon. ngarri-djarrang is a treasure trove of grassland species, and spending time walking there – eyes down and peeled – is a meditation.
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