A blady grass plant, having been collected, trimmed, translocated, planted, watered and mulched.

A few weeks back, we had the good fortune to get advice from some experts from what used to be called the Threatened Species Unit of the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. They informed us that the extensive roadside patch of a native grass that is common along the coast and northern tablelands is in fact the largest such patch (of two recorded to date) in the Southern Tablelands. The grass is blady grass, or Imperata cylindrica. It grows to about 50 cm high and has a tough flat leaf blade that stands vertically. In summer it is bright green but in autumn and winter it turns red. It produces a feather seed head a little like a miniature pampas grass. It grows in dense thickets and can be an aggressive coloniser, so it should be just about everywhere that it isn’t too cold. But it has an Achilles heel: it is like sugar cane in being a C4 grass, and like sugar cane it stores sweet sugar in its lower stem at certain times of the year. As a result cattle, on discovering this

tough species with a tasty base, can rapidly graze it to local extinction if the stands are small enough. This probably explains why the Goulburn population spreads along the roadside but rapidly disappears at the fenceline.

weeding, planting and seasoling the blady grass.

We have been advised that this might be an excellent species for the wetlands: it is locally quite rare and will serve to shelter migratory wading birds such as snipe and greenshanks. We were also advised to plant within two weeks of that date, while the blady grass was still dormant. As a result we arrived early one Wednesday to the large clump and removed a small area of plants from the very sizeable colony. Each blady grass plant has very small roots but large runners, so were easy to obtain. We immediately cut two-thirds of the leaf blades to reduce water loss, and wrapped the plants in wet newspaper to transport them.

Recycling plant guards from some of the melaleucas drowned in the recent flood. Interestingly enough many of the melaleucas have survived, though some are underwater still.

We then placed the grass in three trial plots: one on top of a rise, one along a slope from well drained to poorly drained, the third at the bottom of a slope near water. We planted them about 50 cm apart and watered them with a Seasol solution to reduce the shock of digging up and replanting. We then mulched them. Additionally, some plants were protected with a red plant guards, while a few others were not trimmed and were allowed to retain their long leaves. Hopefully we will learn which is the better site for blady grass and what treatment is best for this easily obtained species.

A large clump of a tiny plant: stonecrop.

And just one final note for the week (or fortnight). There may be plenty of weeds cropping up, but there is much long-lived native material producing its own rewards. Here and there amongst the mulch and bare areas, a few patches of a very small, rather plain looking native plant have arisen. It is Australian Stonecrop, Crassula sieberiana. The photo shows how tiny even a large specimen of this species can be, so it is very easy to overlook.

The mysterious erosion gully cutting through one of our steepest banks.

Well, it has been a little while since the last post and we’ve mainly been busy cleaning up and working behind the scenes on the first bird hide, and that takes a lot of welding. In the mean time we had a problem and a mystery to solve. On the steep southern bank in an area seemingly a long way from gutters and drains is a jagged gully with knife-edge cliffs. It is a small insight into the past and houses some tree roots, boxthorn roots, a rusted pipe and, at least as important, a tiny cave built and regularly used by two little feathered jewels: spotted pardalotes. These tiny birds are black and yellow and spotted with white, cream and red. Their high pitched “sleep baby” call is familiar to anyone in the bush as they go about their business eating large amounts of lerps and other insects and, as a result, improving the health of eucalypts.

Ooh look, an answer to our question.

But what was causing the erosion? The top of the gully was a long way from any overland water and we appeared to have re-routed flows from the street drains. But last Friday peter Mowle decided to clean up the rubble filled bank below the fence. In doing so he uncovered a hitherto unknown drain coming from across the street. This has leaked large quantities of water through the porous ground to create our little canyon. So Peter carved a new drainage line away from the old brickworks site and this week we started to fill it with neatly placed brick rubble, both to conserve the heritage of the site and to minimise the effects of erosion.

Another problem then presented itself. Inside the drainage pipe there was a large pink coloured root. At first we thought to our horror it might be some illegally placed electrical cable, but it turned out to be the very much alive root system of a willow removed early in 2012. Time, flowing water and a good strong truck should extricate that.

Embarking on our epic journey.

We had to do something about the drowned plants and their equally drowned guards. As a result Rodney brought his canoe (let’s not talk about it falling off the truck) and, with the help of two young assistants, embarked on an expedition into the swamps seeking elusive and disjointed tree guards. We rescued quite a few guards that will be used to replace the inferior green plastic and bamboo. We avoided most major mishaps, though one of the crew was shivering by the end of the voyage, having soaked her knees in very cold water. The Coleman canoe traversed the large pond, herding flocks of coots and white-eyed ducks in front of us and risking the noisy ire of hundreds of aggressive silver gulls. We witnessed them attacking a masked lapwing (spur-wing plover) and marvelled at their bravery.

Wait for me! Poor Biscuit.

Waiting in malevolent anticipation.

Not quite so brave was Biscuit the one-eyed dog. He desperately wanted to come along but there was no room, so he raced out along a rock berm as far as he dared hoping forlornly that we would change our minds.  At times we were completely surrounded by swirling, screaming gulls, but they left us alone and displayed annoyance rather than nervousness at our intrusion. We collected many pink guards and made two noteworthy discoveries. Myriads of feral aquatic snails — the results of dumped water from fish tanks and irresponsible fish owners — were breeding like crazy, climbing over and depositing little jelly-like hemispheres of eggs onto the submerged tree guards. The other discovery was, that despite being completely submerged now for about a month, a great many of the young melaleucas were still alive and even showed green young leaves at the ends of their few branches.

There is another problem that the flood revealed, but more about that next time.