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Solitude is a relative concept. It
seemed we brothers were the only campers along this shore of the Murray
River on an Anzac Day weekend, but in the arid zone between Australia's
agricultural outposts and the dry centre, you are never completely
alone. The flies still abound in late summer populations sustained by
April rains. And the Murray with its trailing lagoons, billabongs,
creeks and flooded lakes becomes Federation Square for migratory and
squatter forms of birdlife.
At dusk the corellas chase regent parrots from prime nesting red gums on
the river edge. It's a permanent game of Cinderella's slipper as the
smaller regent parrots eventually find nesting locales much too squeezy
for corellas and remain unchallenged therein. The mauking moans and
mewling of the corellas is overwhelmed by shrieking from a formation of
sulphur-crested cockatoos. In several half-hearted attacks on corella
nesting trees, they cause alarm but don't hang round to capitalize on
the havoc. Hit and run. Wings vivid white as they swoop low against
brown Murray waters darkening under a pink-hued sunset.
I am no dedicated twitcher. Being in the timber life, I am much more a
tree bloke. Flora over fauna. My thoughts over this weekend were on Red
Gums, which dominate the canopy of the shore forest. Apart from word
games devoted to besting each other for a collective noun for birds - a
lamentation, a persecution or a grief of corellas; a jihad, a detonation
or a shrill of cockatoos - we wondered with what expertise could we
guess at how different, or how unchanged, this section of river in
Murray-Kulkyne National Park would have been before European settlement.
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'Tis a useful skill, imagining
- particularly in the absence of knowing. You cannot always know, but
you can be as curious as you like. Brother Mole, with experience of the
mid-north coast, imagines a dense understorey removed by settlers or
aborigines and kept barren by 4WD vehicles. And certainly off-roaders
have degraded parts of the bank. But brothers Ratty and Toad both
believe the present low grassy understorey with fallen branch and sparse
juvenile Cooba Wattles, is close to the original open canopy forest.
Filtered sunlight reaches the ground. Leaf and branch litter pile
against onshore logs or accumulate in washouts and depressions.
To my mind, the greatest change over 200 years lies on the very banks.
No doubt erosion and undercutting always took place. Red Gum thrives in
the impact zone. Flood, current, and piled debris. However, I believe
fallen trees and captured floodwrack would have provided a texture of
anarchy and disorder to the river bank we do not see today. It may have
facilitated flooding or diversions to runoff lagoons and creeks as
break-offs caused larger chokes downstream. For always in the pattern of
occurrence and propagation is the driftline of same-age trees. Seedlings
on the sandbars, young trees on new shorelines and mature trees leaning
from vertical both ways on higher banks. A linear drift which mimics
downstream flow of water.
Here on the banks in the closing decades of the 19th century, paddleboat
crews cleared log jams to make navigation safer - and cut the logs as
fuel for their steam engines. Later, their bow waves helped undercut
unprotected banks - as ski boats do today. The cattle we see wandering
onto the beaches on the NSW side is a sign that 22 years of established
landcare principles have to be constantly put to all persons who share
the common resource of waterways - not to regard them as a personal
right, but rather a shared privilege to be protected.
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Camped on the banks, it is
easy to imagine an always-present open forest glade that allowed breezes
in summer to cool the river dwellers. This is a forest type unlike other
forest types in Australia. It does not resemble coastal forests, nor
does it resemble other inland forests like the Box-Ironbark forests of
Victoria, or the Callitris-Ironbark forests of NSW. It is part of the
uniqueness of our forests.
Who - except in Dreaming - ever imagined a River Forest? A forest that defined, and was defined by, a river system. Was only as wide as a verge or a connective woodland
belt? A narrow linear drift forest occasionally bursting like an aneurysm at a chokepoint or obstacle on its wide flat journey, to create lagoon or flooded forest, then rolling slowly onwards to a distant sea.
Upriver, Red Gums merge in open woodlands with Yellow Box, Grey Box, Ironbark and foothill species of
Eucalypt, but maintain single species intensity in the river zone and its feeder creeks. Downstream
- especially in the arid zone - the linearity, the sinuous, life-giving river and its narrow attendant forest, is stark in the landscape.
We don't pay much for forest management in these national parks - and it
shows. Many of the degraded features of the parks can be remedied by
Parks Victoria staff if the budget allows. Park fees could include
firewood collection at the entry, to stop collection of strategic fallen
habitat log. People using the park for camping can be catered for and so
can landcare objectives. It lies within our traditions of use and care.
More measuring, reporting and assessment can be done to improve park
management. It's what we have science for, after all. In the meantime,
it belongs to our imagination, to visualize an ideal for the Murray
River and its forests.
-'Badger', Hattah Lakes April 2010
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