BETWEEN FRIENDS

Welcome to the 10th year of the
Friends of Buchan Caves!

Yes that's right. Our Friends group is now one of the longest running in Victoria. As we enter our tenth year there is yet more uncertainty and doubt surrounding privatisation by the Victorian Government and what it will lead to, especially at the Buchan Caves Reserve. Yet, at the same time it is known by the supporters of this Friends group that we will continue to function and seek out ways of furthering our aims and to keep people motivated into doing something about karst preservation, restoration and education.

This newsletter includes the vitally important calendar of activities for this year. One working bee weekend has already transpired and a report appears within. Unfortunately there was not enough time to publish the newsletter between when the dates were decided and that weekend.

The next working bee is right upon us, and will take place over the ANZAC day long-weekend, commencing Friday 25th April. This is an important weekend and there is hope for a good turn-out to help with the planting of seedlings in the extended Potholes revegetation plot. I helped out with previous plantings and there has been immense satisfaction in seeing them grow from tiny plants into stocky trees twice my height.

With Geoff Hammond's help we have embraced new technology and the Friends of Buchan Caves now has a page on the Internet World Wide Web. The last article in this newsletter contains the most of the text of the page and includes the URL where those lucky souls with Internet access can view his work in full colour and see what else is on offer.

Friends AGM weekend

30 November - 1 December 1996

by Peter Ackroyd, 17 February 1997

This working bee weekend really started on 29th November when Peter Ackroyd and Jenny Smith walked from the Caves Reserve in Buchan up to the Potholes collecting seeds for the Potholes Revegetation Project. It was a delightful walk in perfect weather and resulted in the collection of seeds of all the required species except Lightwoods, which were only just starting to bud. Some tree climbing was involved! Late that night, they were joined in their peaceful campsite at the far end of the Reserve by the rest of the Friends.

The following day was to be a day for weeding and fence maintenance at the Potholes. Peter and Geoff did some fence maintenance and then joined the others in eradicating weeds from the original revegetation plot. This plot was placed around the area containing the last few trees standing in this part of the paddock and many weeds have grown up under these few mature trees, seed having been brought in by cattle which congregated there. There has been a noticeable reduction in the number and variety of weeds in this area since we started our weed control program in 1992, proving that with constant pressure even the most tenacious of our introduced pests can be eliminated. In addition, it was pleasing to note that some of the Buchan Blue Wattles are now over 3.5 metres tall, with some of them in flower! Many of the slower growing Yellow Box and Casuarinas are over 1.5 metres tall.

By the afternoon there were only a few of the hard-core stayers remaining, the sun and hard work both taking their toll. Chipping out weeds is not very pleasant work and even the weeding wands, which are our chemical warfare weapons against the Horehound and Great Mullein, become tiresome after the first six hours or so. At 5.00 pm Peter and Jessica (a visiting American caver) found they were the last ones there and decided to stop for the day.

Back at the Caves Reserve, Glenn and Erica were painting the new Friends information sign they had made and, in the afternoon, assisted by San and Rosemary, prepared salads for the Friends barbecue.

That evening, the Friends Annual General Meeting and free barbecue was held at the guides hut. It was attended by 25 people, some of whom, curiously enough, we hadn't seen since the last Friends barbecue. Afterwards there was the election of officers for the coming twelve months. Our new President is Wayne (Spot) Matthews, the Vice President is Mick Adler, the Secretary is Erica Maggs and the new treasurer is Phil Steel. Votes of thanks were passed for Mick Adler as the retiring President and for the work done by Erica, San and Rosemary in the preparation of the evening's meal.

The next day saw a much reduced crew of four of the hard-core Friends out at the Potholes killing off more weeds and, in the Caves Reserve, Glenn, Erica, Rosemary and San putting the finishing touches to the new Friends information sign in the Caves Reserve.

On the way back to Melbourne I dropped in on the nursery to check on our next crop of trees. I am growing about 150 of these myself but the majority will come from the nursery simply because I don't have the space to grow 1,200 trees! The trees at the nursery are all grown from seed I collected from the Potholes area in September. This seed will be supplemented by the seed I collected on this trip. The trees currently being propagated by me, and at the nursery, will be ready for planting out in April - the ideal time for young trees. It would be good to get as many people along as possible to help get these trees in. I have arranged for two tree planting tools to ease the work load and this will hopefully encourage some of our less frequently seen Friends to come along and help. If not, I guess we can always look forward to seeing them at our next free barbecue.

15 - 16 February 1997

by Peter Ackroyd, 5 March 1997

On the weekend of 15-16 February 1997, a dedicated band of Friends volunteers worked in the hot sun to prepare the second section of the Potholes revegetation plot to be ready for the tree planting weekend of 25-27 April 1997 (ANZAC Day weekend).

The Potholes revegetation crew met up with Dale Calnin on Saturday to discuss their needs for the weekend and loaded up the 4WD with weedicide, weeding wands and general paraphernalia. During this time the Friend's information board near the kiosk was updated with new photos and text.

For the rest of the day, Peter Ackroyd, Glenn Baddeley, Erica Maggs and Thomas Maggs did their best, in the blazing sun, to clean out the weeds from the 2nd revegetation plot on the southern Potholes hillside. It was heartening to see that the weeds treated in early December 1996 are now dead and gone and that the trees in the first revegetation plot are doing extremely well despite several setbacks.

It was disheartening to note that destructive types had damaged our protective electric fence by disconnecting it then climbing the wires, ruining the wire tension in the process. This could also be the reason the corner post has been lifted out of the ground. What makes it worse is that these people were evidently cavers.

Later, in the Buchan Caves Reserve, the same team of four collected $35.50 from the sale of the Friends bat information pamphlet, a slow but steady mover, and updated the Friends information signs in the Royal and Fairy Caves.

At 5.00 pm, when the day had cooled to a scorcher, the team returned to the Potholes to look for Lightwood seeds for the revegetation project. Unfortunately none were to be seen.

That evening the Secretary (Erica) and Treasurer (Phil) brought the Friends records and address list up to date. Phil reported that since before Christmas the donation bins in the caves had yielded $154. We also learned that Jude, Jessica, Jim, Brenton and Ashleigh had been cleaning decoration and clearing silt traps in Fairy Cave during the day and that everyone else had been off caving!

On Sunday, on another blazing hot day, Peter, Glenn, Erica and Thomas returned to their labours at the Potholes to try to get everything in readiness for transplanting the new seedlings in April. Everyone else elected to either go caving for the day or go to the Snowy/Buchan River junction.

The Anzac Day working bee will be held from 25-27 April and will involve lots of tree planting as we get our next batch of endemic tree species in for the Autumn growing season. Why not come along and help revegetate the Potholes? Everyone is welcome.

Those who attended and worked on this weekend:

Peter Ackroyd	Thomas Maggs	Brenton Tulk
Glenn Baddeley	Jude Matthews	Jim Tulk
Dale Calnin	Jessica Stephenson	Phil Steel (admin)
Erica Maggs	Ashleigh Tulk

Please note that all email addresses include ".trip89" as an anti-spam measure. Please remove ".trip89" to make them legitimate addresses.

Feel free to contact any of the Executive Officers by phone or email. Correspondence and enquires may be sent via post to:

by Peter Ackroyd, 11 July 1996

I have been a member of the Friends of Buchan Caves since its inception in November 1987. In the intervening nine years I have been to all of the Friends meetings and working bees except four and have enjoyed them immensely.

The work may be hard but it is also very rewarding. That is one of the reasons I keep going back to dig out old cave rubble, wash decoration and clean it with scrubbing brushes, build pathways and the myriad other labour intensive jobs that we do.

However, the principal reason comes from a sense of balance between what one gives and what one takes. Caves and karst have given me a lot of pleasure over the years and it seems the least I can do is to give up four or five weekends a year to put something back in repayment.

In addition, I get further pleasure from being in some of Victoria's best decorated caves carrying out restoration work and, when working on the surface, more pleasure is gained from helping to manage Victoria's karst landscapes.

Any good caver can and does have a lot to offer cave and karst managers. The knowledge gained over many years of close association with karst processes and features puts cavers in a good position to provide specialist advice on the best ways to perform certain tasks or to carry out management objectives.

It has been suggested by some that Friends workers are no more than slave labourers for the Department of Natural Resources and Environment. This, in my opinion, is a very selfish approach, not at all in keeping with what I would regard as that of anyone concerned about the karst environment.

Contact the membership officer, Phil, and he will accept the very modest sum of $2. This covers the cost and postage of this newsletter for the calendar year.