Tell us what is happening at your pond now that we have entered spring?? Add some photos too!!

By Jan Chamberlin.

We have visited our son David and his family in many places around the world – Vietnam, Germany, Singapore and Indonesia – but this was the first time he had been in a real country town. Although we had only a few days on this trip to see Birchip and the surrounding areas, we made the most of our time, and have been left with some lasting impressions.

Our business in New Zealand has always been sheep and cattle farming, and although we are now retired, we are always interested in seeing how farmers operate in other countries. We were delighted to see the McClelland farm and explore the differences between our farming methods and theirs. When Ian pointed out a crop that had just been sown, we asked how big the paddock was, and found out it was bigger than our first farm! We of course are used to rainfall of 60 inches (1,560 mm) per year, and stocking rates of about 6 sheep to the acre, so the comparative figures for Cambrae in those areas were illuminating also.

The animals were different too – even though Ian and Warrick run some Coopworths, as we did. The lambs were a different shape and size, and grew much finer wool. Even the sheep dung was totally unlike the dung we were used to, as our sheep were never grain fed.

We never had an emu that thought it was a sheep, and mice plagues haven’t been a problem for us. There were dead mice everywhere, and I was most impressed by how casually the Chamberlin family all dealt with the little corpses in the traps at their house!

We were pleased with the great ‘commute’ David has to his office, and the children to school. After Jakarta, when the traffic was so bad that they had to allow hours to travel about 15 km, a three to five minute walk to work or school is a doddle.

Our first impressions of what the school would be like came on the day that we went to watch the grandchildren play sports. JR was on the gate at the oval, and quickly fleeced us of all the money we were carrying. We thought that his skills were amazing, and that they would be very useful when trying to get money out of the government for school equipment!

The library at the school is a great asset to the town, and we took a book out immediately. We will certainly be back there next time we visit.

We enjoyed reading Anne McClelland’s book about Birchip, and will go back to it again before we return. There are a number of things we didn’t have time to see and do – like ‘Seek and See’, for example – and we will be doing our homework on those. We’ll also be making another visit to the bakery for those great pies and vanilla slices!

BCG seems to be a very switched-on workplace, providing challenges for all its employees. The short time we had to look at some of the work being done showed us that the information received from the research must be of huge value to the members and to Australia at large.

They’re an enterprising bunch at the BCG office too – the minute we were introduced, they were asking what jobs we would like to do at the Expo (what a shame we had to come home before that!)

We will be fascinated to hear how the trials work out on some of the plots we saw, and to hear what benefits experiments such as the polymers one will bring for dry country farming in the future. And if you give us the dates well in advance, BCG people, we’ll be delighted to come and work at the Expo next year!

After 7 inches of rain in January, 2011, the wildlife pond situated in a Trust for Nature Covenant on “Roselyn”, Birchip West, this pond was flooded.

In July there is still excess water around it. Last Spring there were frogs to be heard and the mob of kangaroos that pass through enjoyed drinking from it.

Birds that have been using this pond as a food and drinking source prior to the floods were magpies, galahs, wood ducks, red-rumped parrots, Eastern rosellas, magpie larks, noisy miners, pied butcher birds, white-winged choughs. When the floods occurred, a nearby dam was filled which is preferred at present. Last week two white-necked herons were at the dam.

As the BCG Website Development and e-Communications Officer, I came along to the Birchip session of the Web 2.0 workshop today to learn about the value of interactive blogs to communicate information among our farming communities.

Innovative technology is a valuable resource that many people, farmers included, are unaware of. The workshops being conducted by BCG are aiming to change this, by teaching the public how to upload and share information, videos and photos.

Would you believe this is a floodscape taken at Birchip!!!!?

This is a photo of a road used as a test for Web 2 training

Flooding along the Yarriambiack Creek brought many memories of great times with the natural flow of water in our rivers and creeks in the Wimmera Mallee areas.

This was something that many of our teenagers had not experienced and families had gathered to experience this exciting time for the area and the township of Hopetoun.

Walking in the creek for 2 kilometres to find the head of the flow, we finally reached the railway bridge south of Hopetoun. We were ahead of the water and as we waited for it to trickle into the culverts under the bridge, we  climbed down the steep slopes and actually walked through as the water was rushing to make its way to the 2 mile bridge. An awesome experience that we will remember for many years.

Hopetoun Landcare and BCG rang us to build a pond on our farm. A ” how to build a pond” workshop was held on our farm in August 2009.  The workshop demonstrated how to build a wildlife pond, with lots of help from landcare members.

From the pond excavation soil we made a moon shape bank that we planted with local plants we sourced from the Dimbool native nursery owned by Ted Brown. The bank soil was limestone based which we supplemented with some sand. Finally we added a layer of mulch. Old chemical drums made for very effective tree guards.

The pond has developed over that time.

Since the rains in summer, our plants are now well established.

Some of the animals we have seen around our pond include lots of tadpoles, stumpy tailed lizards, galahs, magpies and honeyeaters, Of course, plenty of frogs – Pobblebonks!

Yvonne and Eric Anderson, Nyallo Hopetoun.

Flora photographed in July 2011

 

I feel like a murderer – driving home last week at about 9pm there were soooooo many frogs on the road that even with Mark Webber skills I was unable to avoid running over numerous little frogs!
 
Rain showers had wet the road and many frogs such as these ones in the photo were everywhere – I stopped and counted over 10 just in my headlights.
 
Apparently the regular rain events and wet conditions have resulted in a permanent supply of tadpoles and therefore frogs, so there are a range of shapes and sizes in the frog population at the moment.
 
I have no idea what type this little fella is – does anyone know?
 
Alex