Friends of Wilson Reserve

Monthly working bees: on the 3 rd Sunday of each month for 2 hours, 10 to noon. Contact Robert Bender for more details on Tel: 9606 2283 or email rbender@netlink.com.au

Click here for the pdf file of the latest Friends of Wilson Reserve newsletter.

Robert Bender writes:

Wilson Reserve is a 40-hectare reserve in the City of Banyule on the north side of the Yarra, in Ivanhoe, wedged between Ivanhoe golf course, the Chelsworth Park sports fields managed by Ivanhoe Grammar school, and a residential estate. Green Acres Golf Club is on the opposite bank of the river, and Latrobe Golf Club a little further downstream. It is part of the Yarra flood-plain and gets inundated when there is a wet spring. It is a typical passive-recreation reserve with patches of woodland and areas of mown grass and walking tracks.

The land was part of the Chelsworth estate formed in the 1860s from the early division of the area following the 1850s Crown land sales, which is why the adjoining sports fields are named Chelsworth Park. It was broken up into small dairy farms early in the 20 th century. The river frontage was eventually purchased by public subscription in the 1920s by some public-spirited citizens and presented to the then Heidelberg Council, to be preserved for the youth of Heidelberg.

There are many billabongs along the middle Yarra, and three of them are within the reserve: Reedy Reserve, Bailey Reserve and Horseshoe Reserve, all very weedy. Several more are a little further north. They tend to fill in flood events and slowly dry out over summer. Walking tracks have been constructed around Bailey Billabong and along the Yarra bank (less than 10 years ago), and are much used by dog walkers, joggers and cyclists. Council established a dogs-on-leash zone along the river track to protect wildlife such as wetland birds, but the compliance rate is fairly low.

A Sea Scout hut was constructed in the reserve in the 1910s, on the bank of the Yarra, and was very active for many years. A private entrepreneur constructed a miniature railroad around Bailey Billabong in the 1940s and for some years operated it as a tourist attraction on weekends, but eventually vandalism made it unprofitable and it closed. The rail embankment is still visible.

Randall Robinson, an American botanist now resident in Melbourne, was commissioned to prepare a plant species list in late 1993. The list has 174 species, of which 101 are weeds: some tree species, many shrubs, a few creepers, some ground plants. The flora by this time had become very impoverished during the many years of neglect. Wandering Jew, Hawthorn, Fennel, Blackberry, Wintercherry, Honeysuckle, thistles, Ox-tongue, Nightshade, Galium and other weeds dominated the landscape. Especially Wandering Jew (Tradescantia albiflora). Some old residents (in their 80s) have told me that this weed was introduced by Skipper Wilson, after whom the reserve is named. He planted a decorative border of it around the Scout Hut, and fishermen digging for worms have been the main vector in spreading the weed. It now dominates the reserve, growing to a density of about a metre all over the place.

Nevertheless, a good range of bird species, both resident and migratory, uses the area. Many water birds, parrots, cockatoos, Ibis, hawks, robins, wrens, and the usual suite of introduced exotics: Starlings, Blackbirds, Mynahs, pigeons. The Warringal Conservation Society produced a book on Birds of Heidelberg in 1981, which is still a good guide.

Banyule Bushland Management Team (currently 6 staff, 2 of them dedicated mainly to Wilson Reserve) operates from a municipal depot in Liberty Parade, Heidelberg. They have worked for years on restoration of some defined patches in the reserve (map of reserve), and have been very supportive of our efforts. They have supplied us with plants, collected our weed piles, provided some plant ID to increase the range of species we can recognise, sometimes supply tools for work days, sometimes attend our work days.

The Friends group was officially formed in April 1996. I had been regularly weeding parts of the reserve on my morning runs with my dog. Lincoln Kern, then employed part-time as Banyule volunteers coordinator, invited me to form a group, did some letter-boxing of leaflets in the near neighbourhood of the reserve and called a meeting. About 25 people turned up, of whom about 15 formed an ongoing membership. Nearly all of them had no knowledge of local or weed plants, except Wandering Jew, so education of group members has been an ongoing need.

Monthly working bees were started immediately: on the 3 rd Sunday each month for 2 hours, 10 to noon. I selected a patch on a bend of the Yarra, about 30 x 30 m. totally covered at ground level in Wandering Jew and Blackberry, with many mature trees and shrubs emerging through them –mainly of 4 species: Red gum, Black Wattle, Tree Violet and Prickly Currant-bush.

Work was mainly weeding over the first 18 months – clearing the ground of Wandering Jew, snipping away Blackberry canes, pulling out a few other easily recognisable weed species, including some Hawthorn trees, an English species much favoured by early colonists to help remind them of home and to provide food for the English songbirds they also brought with them. The Banyule Bushland crew regularly removed weed piles within a few days of working bees, and usually one of them attended our working bee, and supplied tools, and sometimes plants, mainly Tussock grass (Poa labillardieri) a widely used species for revegetating river-side zones. We generally had 5 to 10 members at working bees, with a notice of meeting dates included in a monthly newsletter of a single A4 sheet, which has now grown to usually 2 and sometimes 3 pages – four recent issues are here for anyone who is interested.

We noticed much natural regeneration of a few tree and shrub species: Red gum, Manna Gum, Black Wattle, Silver Wattle, Tree Violet, Prickly Currant-bush, Kangaroo Apple, Hemp bush. Clearing the ground of Wandering Jew, removing Blackberry canes, lopping Hawthorns made room for germination and growth of seedlings of indigenous species, which formed very dense clusters. Keeping the ground clear around these has been an ongoing task, which is still continuing.

A few ground covers survived: Lesser Joyweed, Self-heal, Native Raspberry. These survive at various points around the reserve and have become established in our revegetated areas. Nearly all other ground covers, including all grasses, were eliminated by the aggressive spread of Wandering Jew, which forms a cover to a depth of about a metre throughout the reserve.

No native grasses survive in the area. By year 3, working bees included some planting, mainly of Tussock grasses (Poa labillardieri and P. ensiformis), of which well over 3500 have now been planted, usually 50-100 at working bees in the wet season, and I used to put in five a day several times a week on my morning weeding visits. About 250 Goodenias, perhaps 40 Hazel shrubs and a few daisies and Cassinias, and recently some trays of sedges along the river bank.

Membership has fluctuated, and seemed for little while to be dwindling towards extinction, but is now steadily growing. They are mainly middle-aged people, aged 30 to 65 and live within about 2 km. Some occasionally bring their children. Many people walk their dogs, jog, cycle around the billabong circuit past our patch. Some stop to tell us what a fine job we are doing. A trickle of them stop and say they would like to help, so membership is slowly growing. Most recruits have been people who have stopped for a chat on my mid-week morning planting and weeding visits.

Some people were unable to attend working bee mornings, but developed a practice of pulling out weeds on their morning walks with their dogs, leaving piles of weeds for the Banyule Bush Crew to remove. Three groups, one with two women, one a single woman and another a married couple, have taken a proprietary interest in their little patches and visit them several times each week to weed and maintain them

Several Venturers used the group in 2000 and 2002 as a focus for projects to earn Environment badges, which involved spending 20 hours in the reserve weeding, planting grasses and checking our bat boxes.

In late 1998 two of us started a monthly night walk around BaileyBillabong to develop a frog species list, and very occasionally we are joined by one or two others. We have now done this for 8 years and have a good database on the 6-7 species calling in the reserve.

I have had access to a bat-detector (a microphone with a transformer to convert the ultrasonic echolocation calls of little bats down to human-audible frequencies) and have found a good population of insectivorous bat species using the reserve on fine nights in the warmer part of the year. There are very few large old trees with natural hollows, so adding extra hollows for the bats seemed an idea worth trying. A grant of $400 was sought in 2000 from Council funds to construct some bat roost boxes. 8 were installed in August 2000 in the hope of encouraging insectivorous bats to use them. For 4 ½ years there were no signs of bat usage of the boxes, then in Feb 05 one bat was found, and by year-end this grew to nearly 100 bats, so a regular monthly monitoring project has been established

We make an annual effort on Clean Up Australia Day each year tackling a different local rail station (Ivanhoe, Darebin, Alphington, Heidelberg). Litter left by the crowds attending weekend sporting events, cricket or football, at the nearby ovals at weekends, or by ferals using the park at night, are cleaned up several times each week – mainly fast food wrappers, bongs, condoms, tissues, drink bottles and cans.

We have a monthly newsletter, which I write and fill with digital photos or with pictures from Birds of Heidelberg or Flora of Melbourne, and this is distributed by the office of the Banyule Environment Officer, Pat Vaughan. The newsletter includes some wildlife sightings, comments on seasonal changes in vegetation, and reports on our Waterwatch, frogging, batting nights fungi sightings, and working bees.

We have made contributions to development of city policy on dogs in parks, commercial sponsorship and advertising on signage in parks, wildlife corridors, policy for managing volunteers, responses to the Banyule “State of the Environment” reports, published annually, and recently participated in the Yarracare series of evening feedback sessions organised to collect volunteer conservation groups to articulate the issues that concern them.

In mid 2000 we were invited to join the Waterwatch project, doing regular water quality monitoring, and two of our members have taken on this responsibility, doing monthly testing at four sites. This takes about an hour each site visit, so over a year it is a large commitment. We also joined the Fungimap Project conducted by the State Herbarium mycologists, and contribute reports to it, of about 10 species so far, and the Frog Census Project conducted by Melbourne Water and the Amphibian Research Centre, to which monthly survey data is contributed.

Several rainforest species (Tree Tobacco, Madeira Wintercherry, Sweet Pittosporum) are established in the reserve and are steadily being removed. Rainforest trees tend to have large broad leaves, hanging horizontally, forming closed canopies and shutting out the light at ground level. In this way they suppress plants growing beneath them and in effect clear a patch for themselves by removing the competition.

We are slowly turning the reserve from a weedscape into a semi-natural bushland. In the process the members have enlarged their knowledge of indigenous and weed plant species, of birds, and regeneration methods, and come to see what can be achieved in a fairly short time. We have operated for just over 10 years to date, and have made a big difference to our little patch, and to many other parts of the reserve, too.

We have also taken an interest in other nearby properties and do occasional work weeding and planting – at Ivanhoe Park cutting, Ivanhoe rail station and the river track along the Yarra east of the reserve, all of which are being slowly restored to indigenous grassy woodland vegetation.

In 2005 our Waterwatch coordinator succeeded in persuading Melbourne Water to excavate the blockage at the inlets of two of the billabongs and we have now done one season of revegetation work at one of these sites, in 2006.

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