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Native forests recover from bushfires

native-forests-bushfires — Blackdown Tableland National Park, September 2020

We were at least one kilometre into a bush walk at Blackdown Tableland National Park in central Queensland before realising it was recovering from a bushfire. Such is the extent of regrowth since September 2018, it is only when you see trees that have been completely hollowed out by fire that you become aware.

She Who Bush Walks pointed out what she called ‘epicormic growth’ which is what occurs when buds buried beneath the bark of a burned tree burst into life.

You might recall hearing about this particular fire, two years ago to the day, when eleven tourists became trapped at the park’s feature attraction, Rainbow Falls. A fire and rescue worker was winched down from a helicopter to take charge of the eight adults and three children and lead them to safety.

At the time, fire was also raging 300kms away in Carnarvon Gorge National Park, which from all reports has also bounced back from the ravages of fire.

When fire burns out a patch of bush, it is not the ecological disaster it may at first seem. Fire burns plant material above the ground surface, which clears the way for new growth once the ground has cooled and there is follow-up rain.

According to educational material prepared by the Tropical Savannas Cooperative Research Centre & Bushfire CRC, regrowth primarily comes from above-ground re-sprouting.

“ While many trees are killed by total defoliation following a fire, some can re-sprout from epicormic buds, which are buds positioned beneath the bark. Eucalyptus trees are known for their ability to vegetatively regenerate branches along their trunks from buds”.

“Below-ground roots and underground stems can also survive because soil is a good insulator. Plants survive fires by re-sprouting from basal stems, roots and horizontal rhizomes”.

We explored several tracks in the park although after about 8 kms we did not have the energy to climb down to the rockpools (and back up again), fed by Rainbow Falls. The latter is popular with central Queensland residents and holiday makers, who can either camp in the park or travel from campgrounds and accommodation at nearby Dingo or Bluff. (above, epicormic growth).

The park ecology has certainly thrived since recent rainfall. Wildflowers were proliferating along the trails and it was great to see vigorous new growth climbing up the sides of burned trees.

We encountered a group of Aboriginal families, descended from the original inhabitants, exploring the culture trail with a couple of Rangers. A bluff at Blackdown Tableland is the site of a sandstone overhang, under which rock stencils are preserved

The traditional owners, the Gunghalin people, manage the 47,950ha Blackdown Tableland in a co-operative venture with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. As part of this agreement, 70ha has been set aside as a conservation site for cultural purposes.

We chatted to an older woman on the cultural trail who explained why she was going ‘Cooee’ every now and then: “I’m letting the ancestors know I’m here,” she said.

Despite the progressive nature of this management agreement, I could not help but feel a twinge of white settler guilt when reading the history of the park.

Blackdown Tableland National Park was settled as a grazing homestead and perpetual lease property in 1869. Settler William Yaldwin named the tableland after the family home, Blackdown House, in Sussex, England. In more recent times, Blackdown Tableland was gazetted as a State forest and timber extraction site because of its store of valuable hardwood timbers. QPWS says most of the pastoral artefacts are being allowed to decay naturally into the landscape. Wildfires have caused damage to the cattle yards and fences at Mimosa Creek campground.

This week’s FOMM coincides with the first anniversary of the catastrophic ‘Black Summer’ bushfire season across six States and Territories.

The 2019-2020 bushfire season began as early as August in some states and at its worst in February had burned out 17 million hectares.

The statistics are confronting, so I apologise in advance to those directly affected for bringing this up again.

Across six months fire caused:

33 deaths (including nine firefighters);
the loss of 3,094 homes;
5,000 people to become homeless;
the loss of one billion native mammals, birds and reptiles;
More than 85% of the World Heritage Listed Blue Mountains reserve in NSW to be affected;
Fire damage in 153 parks and reserves, 55 of them suffering comprehensive damage;

The Bureau of Meteorology concluded that the fires were the largest by geographic area in modern times. About half of the fires were started by lighting strikes. The rest were said to be of ‘human origin’, the majority accidentally started.

In late September 2019, we left our home of 17 years in the Sunshine Coast hinterland for a new adventure on the Southern Downs. Our temporary home was a 1950s farm cottage at Yangan, 18 kms from Warwick, while waiting for settlement on the house we were buying in town.

Because of serial fires burning in the high country around Cunningham’s Gap and the surrounding areas, the whole valley was often blanketed in dense bushfire smoke. At night you could see the flames licking the tops of the hills. As the weather warmed through October and November we often had to keep the house closed up. Some days the smoke was so bad we could not go outdoors. The towns of Warwick and Stanthorpe were also affected by smoke.

The reprieve came in January with a solid day of rain, followed by heavier falls that topped up our new rainwater tank and partially replenished the town dams. We’re still on water restrictions though, despite a cumulative total of about 450mm for calender 2020.

A year on, after the public in general donated more than $500 million, many people left homeless by the Black Summer bushfires are still living in caravans and tents or sharing homes with friends and relatives.

Despite some decent winter rain, many parts of Australia are still in drought, with dozens of towns on water restrictions. Television news footage of wildfires in California’s Napa Valley this week will be provoking anxiety among survivors of last year’s bushfires.

The Bureau of Meteorology, meanwhile, is confidently forecasting La Nina weather conditions in 2020-2021, which means rain and more rain and an early wet season for the tropical north.

People in the bush, where droughts and bushfires are part of everyday life, tend to be stoic. But on our western journey, it became evident that 2020 has left its mark. COVID-19 restrictions have robbed the outback of its annual influx of tourists and much-needed revenue.

Let’s hope that workers, small businesses, farmers and bushfire victims in rural Australia are not forgotten in next week’s Federal Budget.

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Carnarvon open for business

carnarvon-business — Carnarvon Gorge – The Ampitheatre by Bob Wilson

It doesn’t seem too widely known that the once-notorious black soil road from the Rolleston turn-off to Carnarvon Gorge is now completely sealed. True, there is an unsealed section between Takarakka Resort and the National Park headquarters, but it’s a few hundred metres at best.

In the 1970s, a hired car full of adventurous Kiwis set off for Carnarvon, 720kms west of Brisbane, having heard it was a must-do wilderness experience in Queensland.

“Mind you, it’s four-wheel drive country only,” we were warned. Even with a four-wheel drive vehicle, after heavy rain, the black soil roads to Carnarvon from Injune or Rolleston could become impassable. You either couldn’t get in or couldn’t get out. We naïve Kiwis of course hired a conventional six-cylinder sedan and went close to running out of fuel as the car made slow and slippery progress. We turned back and kind people we met in the pub at Injune offered space in their homes for our tired bodies.

In 2017, the 40 kms of new sealed road from the Rolleston turn-off to Carnarvon completed in June, makes it a dream run. Even last year, when the road between the turnoff and Takarakka Resort was still unsealed, Carnarvon Gorge attracted 65,000 visitors.

The gorge is a spectacular sight after driving across the seemingly endless central Queensland plains. It’s a scenic drive in from the A7 Carnarvon Highway between Rolleston (100 km to the north) and Injune (150km to the south). The only tip for the novice in 2017 is to make sure you have plenty of fuel and to realise that you might need to forego Facebook for a few days.

There was a long period when the remoteness of Carnarvon Gorge and the spirituality of a place held sacred by local Aborigines was the key attraction for hikers keen to soak up the solitude and silence. Friends who recently stayed at Carnarvon Gorge during school holidays were disenchanted with the numbers of people staying there. They have a four-wheel drive vehicle so also visited Mt Moffat, which they said was less spectacular but comparatively devoid of people.

After spending four nights at the gorge (during school holidays), I’m wondering what sort of growth pressures the park will face in coming years. But I’m thinking that Carnarvon Gorge visitor numbers will stay fairly constant. Unless you like a 10-hour driving day, you’ll have to stay overnight at least once between Brisbane and your destination.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s 2005 management plan for Carnarvon noted there were 27 separate tourism operators allowed to do business within the national park. These include coach and helicopter tour operators but no flying in the park itself – drones, as the sign at the headquarters said, are not allowed either. Accommodation and camping ranges from a camp site at the National Park headquarters (36 sites), which, for some reason, is only available in school holidays. At Takarakka Resort, 4 kms outside the park, one can choose between pitching a tent, hooking a caravan up to power and water or staying in one of the powered safari cottages (canvas roof and walls and timber floors). Alternatively, there’s the Carnarvon Gorge Wilderness Resort just down the road where you can enjoy most of the comforts of home.

Unlike some travel articles, which carry coy disclaimers that (writer) was a guest of (airline-travel agency-resort), this blog pays its own way. She Who Organises Things paid in advance for the four nights (powered caravan site at $46 a night). We also signed up for the Sunday night roast dinner ($25 per person).

If I found anything at all less than satisfactory it was the cleaners with leaf blowers.

That minor irritation was offset by the free outdoor movie night (The Castle), which is cornier than I remember but somehow very dinky-di.

Carnarvon Gorge is rugged and remote, and even with its well-marked tracks and the support of local rangers, it would not be hard to get into a spot of bother. One has to rock-hop over the six creek crossings and there are ladders and vertical steps involved with other walks. We walked about 12 kms on our first day and ran out of water by the end of the trip. So you evidently have to carry at least one and probably two litres per person. A reasonable level of fitness is required.

If you are a serious bush-walker with a four-wheel drive vehicle you could spend some weeks exploring this 164,000ha national park and the unsealed roads into nearby Mt Moffat and Ka Ka Mundi national parks.

Carnarvon Gorge was surrounded by pastoral properties, parts of which have since been incorporated into the national park.

In the mid-1880s, white explorers Thomas Mitchell and Ludwig Leichhardt made the public aware of the area’s permanent water. This led to settlers taking up blocks in Central Queensland and sparked off two decades of open aggression between local indigenous groups and the newcomers.

Libby Smith’s historical account of European settlers living on Carnarvon Station (now owned by Bush Heritage), chronicles the hardships suffered by successive owners of the 59,051ha station north-west of Carnarvon Gorge.

They had to battle droughts, floods, bushfires and invasive pests like prickly pear and feral animals. Above all was the remoteness of the property, which sits between Mt Moffat and Ka Ka Mundi.

Even in 2001, the resident managers described Carnarvon Station as more remote than their last posting in Kakadu. Co-manager Steve Heggie said the biggest challenge was the inability to enter or exit the property after the rains. A trip to town involved four hours of hard driving ‘before you even hit the blacktop’.

“We had to plan for adequate supplies of food, fuel and work stores, medical emergencies and for volunteers stranded after rain.”

Smith writes that Carnarvon National Park was extended in the 1960s and 1970s to include pastoral holdings which had been surrendered. They include Salvatore Rosa National Park (1957) and Ka Ka Mundi (1973). The park was also extended west in the 1980s and 1990s. Smith notes there was initially fierce opposition to proposals to expand national parks into pastoral leases.

“There was a fear of any change in land use and ‘locking up country.’”

Smith’s story deals only with pastoral history, but considering that Aboriginal history in Carnarvon long preceded European settlement, the reaction by pastoralists to the conservation ‘threat’ is quite ironic.

In 2001, Bush Heritage purchased Carnarvon Station for conservation. It has since been found to contain 25 regional ecosystems, including seven that were endangered.

Feedback from last week

The Prickly Pear column, also inspired by this trip, engendered a lot of feedback. One reader wrote to say her grand-father had to walk off the land near Roma as a result of prickly pear infestation and became a land valuer instead. Some readers were keen to say the pear has been maligned and that many people grew up used to eating the fruit, which is tasty and nutritious. Another emailed to correct us, saying the river at Nindigully is the Moonie, not the Balonne.

Perplexed Pensioner of Reeseville once again took issue with my claim that white settlers introduced cats. A topic for another Friday, perhaps.

Ah well, Queensland still won!

Prickly Pear makes a comeback

prickly-pear-comeback — Photo of Prickly Pear near Roma by Bob Wilson

You don’t have to travel far inland in Queensland to see that Prickly Pear, the invasive scourge of farmland in the early 1900s, is making a comeback. ‘The Pear’ as it is sometimes known by farmers, has started to re-appear, growing and spreading after the floods of 2011 and 2012.

The Opuntia species (a member of the Cactaceae family) was introduced to Australia (by white settlers) in the late 1880s to form hedges and provide fodder for times of drought.

Prickly Pear, a cactus plant from the Americas, thrived in the Australian outback. The combination of cacti and rabbits, another introduced species, took a heavy toll on Australian farmland at the turn of the century. By the 1920s, Prickly Pear was a major problem. After some years of experimentation, authorities introduced a biological control in the form of the Latin American Cactoblastis Moth. The moth lays eggs on the prickly pear and its larvae eat the cactus. This was hailed as one of the world’s most successful examples of biological control (the moth eggs were distributed manually). Within six years all varieties of the prickly pear cactus had disappeared.

Not so circa 2017, with varieties of Prickly Pear re-emerging along roadsides and in paddocks around western Queensland and the southern Downs. When we travel I notice things like this and habitually make notes (usually when I’m a passenger).

In some areas (Goondwindi to Inglewood is particularly bad); the cactus has spread into farmland back from the road. Some plants look unwell, though whether through poisoning or biological controls we don’t know.

At this point it should be noted that the variety known as Tree Pear (photos) has some resistance to Cactoblastis, though it can succumb to a cochineal insect. The Southern Downs Regional Council recommends the application of herbicides.

In the interests of moistening a dry subject, let me digress and mention two folk bands that enshrined the Prickly Pear legend into folklore.

Toowoomba musicians John and Sandy Whybird formed Cactoblastis Bush Band when John, then a high school teacher at Chinchilla, saw what Prickly Pear could do to the land. He taught students about the pest and the late 1920s solution to the invasive species.

The band, which recently recorded a CD, performed at the Chinchilla Museum last September to commemorate the 90^th anniversary of the introduction of Cactoblastis to the area.

A Brisbane folk duo (Jan Davis and the late Tony Miles), adopted the clever stage name Prickly Pair. They played together for eight years in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

My research led me to the Urban Dictionary, which defines Prickly Pair as slang for the stubble growing back on a man’s testicles after shaving (for an operation or whatever).

Anyway, the Common Pest Pear is back and local farmers ought to know that notification of infestation is required under the Biosecurity Act 2014. No-one expects a problem of the scale which caused farmers to walk off their land after ‘The Pear’ and rabbits finished off what floods and drought had missed. There’s a plaque alongside the Moonie River at Nindigully that commemorates the success of the Cactoblastis moth, when the use of poisons and cochineal insects proved to be ineffective.

Early settlers, in their wisdom, decided to set up a cochineal industry to provide dye for clothing. The cochineal is a scale insect from which the natural dye is extracted. The insects are found on the pads of prickly pear cacti then brushed off and dried.

The Pear is commonly spread by birds and animals eating the fruit and excreting seeds. However, the new spread of Prickly Pear has been accelerated by floods moving broken cacti pads from one location to another.

The State Government’s Business Queensland website describes the Pear as “vigorous in hot, dry conditions, causing other plants to lose vigour or die. It competes and invades pastures and impedes stock movement and mustering.”

Authorities took the rampaging cacti seriously and began investigating biological control agents in 1912. More than 150 insect species were studied, with 18 insects and one mite released in Queensland.

Today, eight insects, including Cactoblastis cactorum remain established in Queensland. An article by Leonie Seabrook and Clive McAlpine in the Queensland Historical Atlas describes Prickly Pear in Queensland as a generic term for five different Opuntia cacti. Three are low-growing shrubs up to 1.5 metres high and two are tree pears, growing up to three metres. The article observes that at the height of the infestation in 1925, prickly pear had spread across 24 million hectares in Queensland and New South Wales.

While the (imported) Cactoblastis Moth was hailed as a biological saviour, early settlers must shoulder the blame for importing invasive species and pests into Australia. Apart from prickly pear and many other weed species, settlers also introduced cane toads, rabbits and feral goats, pigs, cats, brumbies, foxes and camels.

Prickly Pear observations aside, we had four lovely days hiking in Carnarvon Gorge where the weather was balmy. It did rain on the last day but I went for a walk anyway. It’s only rain, as they say in NZ.

As you’ll have gathered, we just spent 10 days towing our little caravan out to Carnarvon Gorge via Rolleston and back via Injune, Roma, St George, Nindigully, Goondiwindi and Warwick. Today we headed home, via Toowoomba and Esk.

Other on-road observations included a lot of road kill, a feral cat, a lone kangaroo out in the middle of the day, a couple of pelicans in a dam, two emus foraging in the long grass, an abandoned car that had been pillaged for parts and a bloke on a recumbent bicycle (the rider lying down and pedalling in a reclining position). We saw two vans smaller than our 12-footer and a massive RV being towed by a 4×4 (with a small car being towed behind that).

We had the usual (and unusual) mishaps common to most caravan expeditions. Like trying to move the car when it was still shackled to the caravan by metal chains (good one, Bob). I bought one of those stainless steel coffee percolators you brew on the stove. First cup I poured tasted a little soapy. As I sipped further down the cup it transpired someone had left a spoonful of congealed dishwashing liquid in the bottom of the cup. (Guess who usually does the dishes? Ed.)

A highlight of the trip was the free camp at Nindigully, where about 50 caravanners were camped beside the Moonie River. A goodly number of them gathered in the pub to watch the State of Origin decider. Many people left at half-time (we assume they were NSW supporters or maybe they were just cold). The ones who remained were in good spirits, taking their crushing defeat like good sports. As we headed back to the van in the dark we heard a chorus of cheering and the war cry ‘Queenslander!’ from the pub.

“How do you reckon NSW will go next year?” I asked She Who Spilt A Pot of Pepper In the Van But Didn’t Want It Mentioned.

“I reckon they’re cactus,” she said, chortling quietly under her maroon beanie.

Online subscribers might have noticed we did not file a FOMM last week. That’s because we were out bush and offline. I did post a 2014 column to email subscribers. You can read it here:

https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/approval/v2?auto=false&response=code%3D4%2F95ecdlLPrRNanWf2kHbdOTsrt5gIfRbSQ-pTeN6r60s&approvalCode=4%2F95ecdlLPrRNanWf2kHbdOTsrt5gIfRbSQ-pTeN6r60s