Victoria's Worst Fires

Cricket match in Melbourne

Following a fun day at the cricket match last Friday (and no, the streaker is not me!) this will be a sombre up-date to my blog in that I have experienced the deadliest wildfires in Australia's history, as of February 10, blamed in the deaths of 174 people and the destruction of entire towns and more than 1000 homes.

It started Saturday morning with a forecast of record temperatures and wind blasts creating the potential for a serious firestorm for the entire state of Victoria state. On this day I was on my way back from Ballarat, where I had stayed the night at the Steve Young house following our Australia New Zealand cricket match in Melbourne. It was already windy at 9 am, as I left for the 2 hr drive to Hamilton, and the winds were gusting from the north, the central part of Australia. I had one of the nifty DPI vehicles again , a Toyote Prius, which I have come to like quite a bit (seeings that there are no Jetta diesels!) and the vehicle's outside thermometer soon registered 40 to top at 41 when I reached Hamilton at 11 am. The wind speeds were close to 100 km/hr. and stepping outside the car it was like having a hair dryer blowing at your face.

We reached 43 later in the afternoon and as forecasted a cold front came in around 6 pm with winds changing to a south westerly direction and much cooler temperatures. By midnight it was 18!

These wind changes are common but raises havoc on the fire fronts, not a reduction in wind but from north to south west in a matter of minutes. Many people got stranded, blocked in by the fire change.

The state is in complete mourning over the losses and the images are horrific.

The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has called it "an appalling tragedy for the nation." and it is extremely sad/infuriating that some of these fires were set deliberately. Mass murder, terrorism from within is part of the verbiage and one individual in New South Wales has already been apprehended.

There were many fires across the state but centered to the area north and east of Melbourne and we were spared in the Hamilton area. The closest fire was near Colleraine about 75 km west, a grass fire that only destroyed some houses and farm property.

I have copied a few of the stories, a change from my earlier blog but I felt it had to be shared, an unexpected part of my stay in Australia and I am considering myself lucky as I travelled through parts of these areas a couple of times in the last month. My job tasks will likely change as Farm Fire Recovery is within the mandate of DPI.

Some of the stories told over the last couple of days:

Witnesses have said the skies rained ash and trees exploded, as temperatures of up to 117 degrees combined with blasting winds to create furnace-like conditions. The fire storm tore through several small towns north of Melbourne on Saturday night destroying everything in its path. One family was forced to dive into a farm reservoir to survive while others took refuge in a community shed with firefighters standing between them and a wall of flames.
A badly burnt man in the town of Kinglake, where there were many fatalities, was kept alive for six hours by being partially submerged by friends in a pool until help arrived.
"It rained fire," said one survivor, showing his singed shirt. "We hid in the olive grove and watched our house burn."
On Sunday, the remains of charred cars littered the smouldering towns, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Melbourne. Some vehicles had crashed into each other as their drivers frantically tried to escape the fire.
"Out there it has been hell on earth," Victoria state Premier John Brumby said in a television address.
Police said the toll could continue to rise as they search the ruins of the wild fires and with 20 people with serious burns in hospital. Thousands of firefighters were still battling dozens of fires in Victoria and New South Wales state on Sunday night.
"We will find more bodies as we gain access to different parts of the fire areas," Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon told a news conference.
"We have found people in cars, it looks like they have decided late to leave their premises. We have found people who have been in properties, in their paddocks. We’ve found others in their houses. And the sad part is that we found children."
Nixon said some of the fires may have been deliberately lit.

The previous worst bushfire tragedy was in 1983 when 75 people were killed in the "Ash Wednesday" fires. Survivors said the Victorian inferno reached four storeys high and raced across the land like speeding trains. "It went through like a bullet," Darren Webb-Johnson, a resident of the small rural town of Kinglake, told Sky TV.

TOWNS DESTROYED
"Hell and its fury have visited the good people of Victoria," said Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who announced a A$10 million aid package. "The nation grieves with Victoria. Many good people now lie dead. Many others lie injured," said Rudd. The army has been put on standby. Firefighters said more than 1,000 homes had been destroyed in the fires across Victoria state so far this weekend, the vast majority in the worst-affected areas north of Melbourne.
Wildfires are a natural annual event in Australia, but this year a combination of scorching weather, drought and tinder-dry bush has created prime conditions for blazes to take hold. Green lawmakers have been urging stiffer climate-change policies to reduce the risk of more such summer disasters.
Dazed survivors, wrapped in blankets, wandered through twisted and charred remains on Sunday, some crying, not knowing whether friends of family had survived.
At the town of Wandong, about 50 km (30 miles) north of Melbourne, one survivor said he had found the body of a friend in the laundry of a burnt-out house.
"Another 20 seconds and we were gone. We lost our dogs. There have been a lot of dead people. My next door neighbour didn’t make it," said one survivor.
KINGLAKE -- Survivors of Australia's deadly bushfires on Sunday described how a thick blanket of black ash blotted out the sun, leaving only a "horrible orange glow" as flames bore down on their homes.
Residents in the worst-hit areas northwest of Melbourne, where most the 84 fatalities occurred, told how they lost loved ones to the flames and desperately tried to help the injured, including children.
Entire townships were razed to the ground, with burnt-out cars strewn across the road outside one of the worst-hit communities, Kinglake, standing in mute testimony to residents who made doomed attempts to escape.
An AFP photographer who reached the town described how the cars had crashed into each other or into trees as towering flames put an end to their flight from the town.
Nearby, the once picturesque hamlet of Marysville was reduced to smoking ruins.
"Marysville, which was one the loveliest townships in Victoria, if not Australia, has just about been wiped out," said pastor Ivor Jones, whose own home in the town was destroyed.
More than 700 homes have been destroyed in total, many around Kinglake, where shops, petrol stations, the local police station and schools were also destroyed.
At least 22 died in the town, with the toll expected to rise as police complete the grisly task of sifting through the ashes for bodies.
Kinglake residents who fled ahead of the fire were kept out by police roadblocks when they tried to return Sunday.
Chris Harvey, who has lived in the town for 22 years and lost his home, believed authorities were trying to shield locals from the horrors awaiting them.
"There's a five-car pile-up on the road into town, all the cars are burnt," Harvey said.
"It's going to look like Hiroshima I tell you, it's going to look like a nuclear bomb. There's animals dead all over the road."
Some residents never even had a chance to flee, with Harvey's daughter Victoria telling of a local businessman who lost two of his children as the family prepared to make a dash for safety. "He apparently went to put his kids in the car, put them in, turned around to go grab something from the house, then his car was on fire with his kids in it and they burnt," Victoria said.
Witnesses told of trees "exploding" with the intensity of the heat and recounted fire fronts that raced towards them with terrifying speed.
Strathewen resident Mary Avola escaped the flames but her husband of 43 years, Peter, died after they fled their home in separate cars trying to reach a nearby sporting oval.
"He was behind me for a while and we tried to reach the oval but the gates were locked," Avola told Melbourne's Herald Sun website.
"He just told me to go and that's the last time I saw him." Authorities have found his body.
Marie Jones said she was staying at a friend's house in Kinglake when a badly burnt man arrived with his infant daughter, saying his wife and other child had been killed.
"He was so badly burnt," she told the Melbourne Age's website.
"He had skin hanging off him everywhere and his little girl was burnt, but not as badly as her dad, and he just came down and he said 'Look, I've lost my wife, I've lost my other kid, I just need you to save (my daughter).'"
Callers to national radio described how they were huddling in swimming pools as flames approached their homes, and of how children were terrified by the powerful winds, furnace-like heat and an eerie orange glow dominating the sky.
"It was so scary, my little girl, she's five years of age and... she's emotionally traumatised by what's happened today - the horrible orange glow," said a caller who identified himself as Roger from Traralgon South.
Jay Cherie described her family's nightmare drive from Kinglake to safety though a raging inferno.
"When the power went out I madly started to try and pack some things. My husband came running into the house and said, 'grab the kids, grab the cat, we've got to get out'," she said.
In the car "we had fire coming in on the right-hand side of us on a paddock and we had houses to the left of us on fire.
"My little girl was saying to me, 'Mum am I going to see my friends again?', she also said to me, 'Mum am I going to live tomorrow?'"

Other disasters

Here is a list of Australia's deadliest natural disasters, as chronicled by official Web sites:_*
CYCLONE MAHINA, 1899: struck Cape York in the country's far north, causing the greatest death toll of any natural disaster in Australia's recorded history. More than 400 people died, including the crews of about 100 pearling fleet vessels, and an estimated 100 local Aborigines.
GUNDAGAI FLOODS, 1852: killed 89 of the southern rural town's 250 inhabitants. More people would have died were it not for the heroism of local Aborigine Yarri and his friend Jackie who saved more than 40 people using a bark canoe.
VICTORIA BUSHFIRES, 2009
ASH WEDNESDAY BUSHFIRES, 1983: Fires erupted across Victoria and South Australia states, killing 75 people, including 12 volunteer firefighters. More than 2,000 houses were destroyed in Victoria and several hundred more in South Australia.
BLACK FRIDAY BUSHFIRES, 1939: Fires broke out in Victoria state, burning almost 2 million hectares (20,000 square km) and killing 71 people. Whole townships were destroyed, prompting a landmark inquiry that led to measures being taken to protect life and property in the event of future bushfires.
CYCLONE TRACY, 1974: struck the northern city of Darwin on Christmas Eve, flattening the city and killing 64 people and injuring many thousands. More than half of Darwin's population of 43,000 was left homeless.
TASMANIA BUSHFIRES, 1967: fire ripped through 264,000 hectares of forest on the southern island of Tasmania in just five hours, killing 62 people and destroying 1,400 homes.

When I arrived back in November I was surprised, as ignorant I was at the time, over the fire preparedness everyone had incorporated into their daily lives. Staff at DPI were rotating on "on-call" for fires and the Country Fire Authorities (CFA), small one bay shops to larger, fire stations were numerous and scattered across the landscape.

I spend a fair bit of my time at Helen Anderson's Dunkeld "bush property" a beautiful 25 acre lot on the edge of the Grampians National Park about 30 km east of Hamilton. It is rustic, secluded and an authentic bush experience with crimson rosellas, kookaburras (famous laughing bird), emus, eastern grey kangaroos, wallabies and numerous small song birds calling this home as well. Fire preparedness is in the form of a water tank (which the birds and this wallaby enjoys also) hooked up to a fire hose and in these pictures some excavation of a trench to install metal sheeting to prevent embers from blowing under the house. Glen Dixon (wife of Peter from Henty Estates) brought her little Daedong (a very nice Korean tractor) out for some dirt moving and spreading some gravel along the driveway of the house.

Sprinklers will also be hooked up to the water tanks to dowse the walls in an emergency. The domestic water comes from the Dunkeld surface filled reservoir (actually very nice water to drink) but this is too unreliable in afire situation. One the plus side in Dunkeld there are plenty of evacuation routes and the terrain is not nearly as hilly as the properties north fo Melbourne.

The fire events have ,however, resulted in a Royal Commission to look into the disaster, a criminal investigation into the causes and also the way in which people reacted, too many too late and out of shear panic. The recommendation has historically been that it is your choice to leave or stay, but authorities will prevent folks from going back in once they have voluntarily left. The speed with which these fires come at your at and the intense heat has typically allowed the houses to function as the best shelter. The fires typically blow through quickly and, once over, the task is to get out and mop up the small fires left behind. The fires of the weekend, especially in the heavily treed areas, were however so hot that many of house windows exploded and the houses no longer providing any safety. At that time it was too late to evacuate. Others simply took the warnings too lightly and left too late. New discussions are focusing on underground shelters, not unlike the ones in the US tornado-prone areas, with modification undoubtedly as the fires consume the oxygen and a hole in the ground needs to have some provisions for that.

Oh, and then we have the floods in the north east Queensland, way up north in the tropics (a 3 hr flight from here) many areas up there receiving 700mm in three days. The rains are continuing. We just had a light shower here at the office, the temps are only 20 and on Mt. William, which we hiked a good week ago when Laura and Linda visited,the overnight temp was 5! Nothing like the weather, I thought the Alberta scenario was unique!

Heading for the Beef Expo Thursday, so a little cattle talk next time.

Cheers

Kim

Into February

Last blog made reference to warm weather but that is a moving target down this way. The hottest three days on record was broken again for the specific time of year, only to see the mercury go even higher. Melbourne has three consecutive days of 43C+ and I broke my personal record of 42.5 C set many, many moons ago hiking into the Grand Canyon, this time surveying for and treating the state prohibited weed Lobed Needle Grass (Nassella charruana) north of Melbourne when the thermometer reached 45.1. We were a group of six split into 3 teams and Roger McRaild and I had a break in being able to check most of the farms from the airconditioned truck.

Now combine this with almost gale force winds from central Australia you will concur: "she's a scorcha".

On a cuter note these pictures was sent to me of a small koala that ventured onto a back porch to get some shade. The people decide to place a bucket of water for the koala to drink and the little fella proceeded to hop in after the thirst was quenched! The tree picture I took myself last Saturday south of Hamilton near Mt. Eccles, known for their koalas and the manna gum trees, whose leaves the koalas enjoy eating

Your reaction in the northern hemisphere to these extreme temperatures is likely the same as when I mention down this way that we often have minus 40 back in Alberta - how can you cope? but it is actually not that bad either way, just have to be prepared and preparedness in hot weather is drinking lots of fluid, a minimum 1 liter per hour, quickly validated by the fact that very little fluid makes it to the body's "normal" drain! The temperatures did raise havoc in a few places, a nasty bush fire destroyed 30 houses south east of Melbourne and the enormous drain on electricity to keep air conditioners going resulted in power outages and fouled perishables in stores and homes. The public train system in Melbourne also needed water cooling as the steel buckled in a few placed making the track unsafe. The Australian Open suffered as well in the heat with a few of the matches played with the roof over the Rod Laver arena covered. On that note the Oz Open brought some Canadian friends to see me - Linda and Laura Christensen. Linda is originally from New Zealand and lives up Red Deer, Alberta way with Gunnar. Daughter Laura enjoys dual citizenship and has spent some time working/visiting in New Zealand recently. Mum and daughter took in some tennis matches and then slipped down to Dunkeld for a couple days' visit. This meant some hiking in the Grampians, including Mt. Williams, the highest point in the Grampians 1100 meters, but you start at sea level! It also gave Laura a chance to see a kangaroo, in fact several hundred of them but this one caught her liking.

Helen Anderson tour guided and provided the Dunkeld house at the base where some fine Henty Estates wine (that will be another blog later) was enjoyed one of the evenings.

Another e-mail I'd like to share: read it very slowly, ponder the stunning beauty of the attached photo of Mt. Bogong in the Victorian High Country before opening some of the finest writing I have seen in along time.

Poem about our Australian summer
Extremely touching and thought provoking!!
I found this beautiful Aussie Summer poem and thought it might be a comfort to you. It was sent to me and it's very well written; I hope you enjoy it because it's the best piece of English literature I've seen in quite a while....
'An Aussie Summer '
a poem by Abigail Elizabeth McIntyre

Shit,
It's HOT !



Last blog also made reference to the caves in the Black Range just north of Hamilton I saw a few weeks ago, a small portion of the Great Dividing Range that pops up a little west of the Grampians. Back in the 1850-ies the local sheep stations had some mysterious thefts of the odd sheep and after many years of searching they finally caught up with the culprit, better knows as the "Wild Mountain Man", not sure what possessed him to do this and live this way but the caves where he escaped the authorities are still there, hidden and visited by few. I was given the directions and found both. In one of the other caves this opening gave an imaginary shape of Australia. I must have several 1000 photos by now and they do force your creativity from time to time!

Hamilton is fairly close to the southern coast line and it is a much cooler place to be when

temperatures soar into the forties.

Here are a few photos from Port Fairy and from Robe in South Australia where I had a chance to visit some acquaintances from last February Ross, Tim and Sandra Garton, who owns a "summer house". A bit windy when I was there but very similar in many ways to the Danish coast line I recall from an earlier part of my life.

This has been a blog with little agricultural content (to some people likely a reprieve) but it will change next time when I detail what happened during the 2009 Hamilton Beef Expo I will attend next week as well as reporting on another visit to John Matthews, my rabbit hunting mate (actually took another 50 rabbits a few nights ago at the station in about 1 1/2 hours, a very hot barrel at times and a bunch of fun! My title is not Pest Management Officer for nothing!) John has a fencing project that needs to get finished this weekend. I am also heading for the MCG, one of the large stadiums in Melbourne for a cricket game Australia vs New Zealand tomorrow, expecting about 60-70,000 spectators so that will undoubtedly be an experience.

Cheers

Kim

The warm weather arrived

It is now January 15th and staff has slowly returned after Christmas and Summer Holidays, a common combination as schools are closed for most of January.

I did have a bit of time off and went back down to Annete and Simon's place near Colac in the Oatways invited by the Anderson clan for a big family get-together. Some nearby guest cabins had been freed up as Annette cleans them for the owners from time to time. All total 10 adults and 5 kids (sharing a bag of Danish Haribo candy (or lollies)to their big delight) had a fun long weekend in this southern part of Victoria.

In the morning of January 5th I bid farewell to the Anderson clan, hopped into my DPI car, a wonderful little Toyota Prius (electric and gas) and I headed up north after a quick visit to Geoff and Lynn McFarlane in Ocean Grove, who had organized the first visit to Australia that Nille and I took part in back in February. After a "cuppa" and some Chrissy cake then onward through Geelong, past Melbourne (about 3 1/2 million people) and up into the high country or the "alps".

I was asked to assist in a weed survey and treatment for Orange and Yellow Hawkweeds near the ski resort Falls Creek and in the Bogong National Park. I am a bit familiar hawkweed with from a couple of small infestations back home in Clearwater County.

Orange (Hieracium aurantiacum) and Yellow Hawkweed or King Devil hawkweed (Hieracium pratense) are State Prohibited Weeds in Victoria and the devastating experience from New Zealand indicates that both hawkweed species could seriously impact much of Australia, especially some of the fragile landscapes such as the “alps”. Anyone traveling to British Columbia in Canada through the Sicamous area in late June will attest to both of these plants’ ability to create massive monocultures along roadsides and rangeland. Alberta needs to take this emerging weed threat serious as well.

The trip also provided some insight into the Victoria Weed Alert model and the Weed Spotter program which is a fairly new program enjoying a lot of success.

In Australia, and in this context Victoria, it has long been regretted that had it been known in the 1800’s how invasive Blackberry, Ragwort, Paterson’s Curse and Gorse would turn out to be, then maybe these weeds would never have been introduced, or maybe the first infestations would have been destroyed while the problem was still small. As all good gardeners know “one year of seeding producers seven years weeding”. This old expression makes a lot of sense. If a weed can be stopped from seeding and getting away, a lot of hard work and effort can be avoided. The Victorian Government is taking the same approach to potential, new and emerging weeds. By preventing serious new weeds from escaping and establishing, Victorians and the rest of Australia can save millions of dollars in lost agricultural production, control costs, environmental impacts, and losses to other social values.
The Victoria Pest Invasion Curve, which was produced a few years back shows 1:100 cost benefit for prevention and 1: 2-5 cost benefit for containment.

The Weed Alert team carries out surveillance, collects, identifies (using the services of the National Herbarium of Victoria), assesses (using weed risk assessment models) and responds to serious potential, new and emerging weeds. Volunteer and trained Weed Spotters are enlisted to assist the Weed Alert team by keeping an eye open for and reporting serious potential, new and emerging weeds to the State.

While in Falls Creek I was part of a team of Weed Alert/ Parks Victoria staff and Weed Spotters from across the state. The task for the week was surveying around previous positive sites for Orange and Yellow Hawkweed as well as high risk areas in this very popular winter sports area where the Yellow Hawkweed was suspected to have been introduced via a New Zealand construction crew building ski lifts a few years back. The orange hawkweed infestation is older and thought to have been brought in as an ornamental as it was only founds inside the ski village.
I was extremely overwhelmed by the cross section of Weed Spotters and their dedication to the program. Many travelled great distance at their own cost and although it is a treat for anyone to visit the “high country” it amazed me to see this level of passion from “all walks of life”. In my group I met a lecturer, a farm wife, a university student, a retired school teacher, a welder, a retired system analyst, a computer programmer, a musician, a chef and an entertainer. The strategy was quite simple, surveying in the vicinity of previous year’s GPS-ed clopyralid (Transline) treated sites for regrowth. A general surveillance of potentially high risk areas was also conducted by walking side by side in teams, each member spaced using a nylon rope and the team guided by handheld GPS units to maintain parallel paths. The landscape is very spectacular, but it is hard work tromping through the swamps, tussocks, brush and hills for several days, good exercise but it further amazed me that the Weed Spotters took this menial task in such good stride.
In Alberta we would have similar benefits from this great initiative and perhaps the Alberta Invasive Plants Council we would be the best suited organization to spearhead this with the representation it has across government and industry stakeholders. Municipal agricultural fieldmen could serve as key contacts for plant identifications (which in many respects they are already). Victoria has over 1500 trained Weed Spotters at this time, no small feat after only 18 month’s of operation.

The trip back took me past some of the other popular alpine areas such as Mt. Hotham, Mt. Feathertop and Mt. Buffallo, where these pictures were taken on top of the "horn".

The summer weather has finally shown and it was very timely for my good friend John Follis, Caroline, Alberta sending me a recent photo of his outside thermometer showing minus 37, just in case I felt a little homesick.

Cheeky as I can be on occasion I responded with one that was well on the opposite end of the scale a couple of days ago out in the court yard at work. Staff down here insisted that the picture be taken complete with a "stubby" in my hand! The mercury topped at 39 about 3 pm on January 13, so the Victoria Bitter (VB) was enjoyed like the man on the old Carlsberg poster I remember from the ol' country. Melbourne had in fact the hottest three days on record but here in Hamilton we are under the influence of the cooler antarctic winds blowing in from the south more frequently as opposed to the very hot winds from the central part of Australia.

Also had a chance to visit the caves in the Black Range north of Hamilton last weekend, sort of a smale mountain range a little west of the main Grampians. They are known forr the aboriginal wall art and the many caves includeing those used by the "Mountain Man"in the late eighteen hundreds to hide from authorities chasing him for theft, especially lambs stolen off of the sheep stations. He used a couple of different caves that are still intact as he left them after his capture.

More about his later.

Cheers

Kim

Happy New Year

Happy New Years

Christmas was indeed interesting, celebrating the festive season in bright sunny, 28C weather, having a fabulous Chrissy Tea in the shade of a gum tree followed by a friendly game of cricket afterwards on the lawn. I was invited out to Stuart and Edna Forsyth, both 80 but still on the farm running some fat lambs (terminal cross as opposed to wool sheep) and their immediate family, a total of about 25.

Stuarts passion for farming is as strong as ever and we had an interesting chat about the industry, his earlier cropping times up north, to when he ran a few head of cattle and now just the sheep. He was eager to head out during the Holidays to buy some new rams, about 5 that he needed for his new crop of lambs.

Then in the evening I was with a bit of an international crowd with DPI staff from China, Taiwan and South Africa hosted by Pat Mibus originally from Kentucky, USA and her husband Graham.

The last month has flown by at lightening speed. I posted earlier some of my involvement with a few weed projects and I thought perhaps a little more about Hamilton would be in order and the actual place where I work.
My office is about 10 km south of Hamilton, a town of about 8500 people, very quiet and rural in atmosphere.The office is under the Victorian State Department of Primary Industries, Farm Services Victoria, Landscape Protection portfolio. Coming from my local government organizational level up in Alberta to a state level here in Australia was obviously a significant adjustment but they are eager to hear how agricultural programs are run at a municipal level and conversely I am pleased to participate in their programs also. The Department of Primary Industries is one of 10 Victorian Government Departments and with a very strong regional focus they employ more than 2,500 staff at 80 locations across the state. DPI provides advice and support to both the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Energy and Resources (agriculture, fisheries, earth resources, and energy and forest industries) and provides services to all Victorians by encouraging the sustainable development of primary industries. The DPI office in Hamilton has a small research station and houses staff from another state department, Sustainability and Environment (water shed resources, climate change, fires, parks and other public land, forests, biodiversity and ecosystem conservation). It is an interesting mix of people, expertise and job descriptions.

Global warming is a popular, and at times divisive, topic here as it is in Canada.
The evidence of a warmer and drier climate is easily felt when hearing the news of a third consecutive year of no irrigation in a large portion of the Murray Darling watershed. The impact on farming has been catastrophic to an area that once was the largest rice producing area in the world. Recently, driving by the now grassed covered lake in nearby Ballarat, I learned that the 1956 Olympics’ rowing competitions were in fact held there. My surprise over the divisiveness is the fact that despite such obvious signs of climate change there are still a few opinions that it is not human-caused but merely a natural phenomenon.

Hamilton is in The Western District of Victoria and the most well known landmark is the Grampians, which is part of the Great Divide mountain range that runs along the east coast of Australia and bends west through Victoria separating the higher rainfall along the coast from the much drier area on the inside of the range. The Murray River is the state's north boundary. The picture on the left is taken just prior to landing at the Hamilton airport on a recent return flight from Melbourne and the other is just outside of the little town called Dunkeld 30 km east of Hamilton. We have had some rain lately, in fact the coolest December in 7 years, things are greening up slightly and people have some smiles on their faces. The picture on the right is of a couple of Laughing Birds, the Kookaburra sitting near McKenzie Falls in the Grampians. They can make quite a racket when they "laugh"

On the flip side the showers have stalled harvest and there has been some deterioration especially in the Canola crops. Harvest was otherwise in full swing, a bit strange as we have just entered summer and despite the drought the wheat, barley, bean and canola crops have done relatively well. The annual crops are in reality seeded in the fall but not winter crops as such. They germinate well this time of year as soil moisture improves with winter approaching and the main growth happens late winter and early spring to come to maturity early summer. Slight frosts may impact crop development on a rare occasion but judging by the crops they are pretty comparable to a good crop in Alberta. The swathed canola crop among the gum trees with a wool shed in the background is from the Casterton area of Victoria.

Mixed cropping and sheep is a common enterprise using the sheep as a clean-up after harvest.

On my way back from a trip up to the north west corner of Victoria I encountered a sheep drive, quite common on the rural roads with the flock getting shifted between paddocks or coming home for shearing. It was a treat to see the dogs master the flock on commands from the truck driver pushing them past my vehicle parked on the shoulder.

I will be away on some hawkweed surveying/control up in the Victorian Alps early in the New Year and may not be near an internet connection for awhile. Mount Bogong is the areas most well known mountain, about 2000 meters high and one of the ski sports destinations during winter. It will be considerably cooler up there, but it should be a good time to see this place with many of the alpine flowers in bloom including hopefully not much orange and yellow hawkweed. The area is very susceptible to hawkweeds, which has devastated New Zealand. It also has the potential to significantly impact Alberta and anyone travelling to through Sicamous BC in late June can relate to the competitiveness of these species in a range situation. We have found and eradicated a couple of infestations in Clearwater County so far and the images from the New Zealand has certainly given some motivation to stay vigilant.

I'll be the first to welcome the New Year so with this - Best Wishes for 2009.

Kim J. Nielsen, Pest Management Officer/Clearwater County Agricultural Fieldman, Hamilton, Victoria, Australia

Kim.Nielsen@dpi.vic.gov.au

Seasons Greetings

It has been fun posting my "happenings" and I am getting used to the blog. I just up-dated my profile and included my e-mail address farmer-kim@hotmail.com. It appears that there has been a fair bit of activity on my blog with 40 visits so far, which is good, worthwhile posting some up-dates then and obviously going beyond my immediate family. I do save the postings also so I have a bit of a personal diary. I have discovered that the older posts are automatically deleted after about 30 days. Not knowing who is visiting I'd appreciate a quick e-mail so I know who you all are. Thanks!

The last couple of weeks have been busy. It is Friday December 19 and catching up on some office stuff before the weekend. Going back to December 9 I travelled back up to Melbourne with some of the office staff to take part in a Regionally Prohibited Weeds Meeting. Under the Future Farming Initiative the goal is to improve biosecurity at a regional scale by managing regionally prohibited weeds. There are some commonalities to Alberta such as Canada Thistle, (they call it California thistle down here and I think that is a fine name!), Scotch Thistle, Ragwort, St. Johns Wort and Golden Dodder (dodder is a Restricted weed in Alberta). But there are also some exotic species such as African Feather Grass, Serrated Tussock, Gorse, which are new to me. Interestingly enough on the state prohibited list we see Orange Hawkweed, Giant Knotweed and Nodding Thistle. State Probited Weeds have to be eradicated and is done by state staff. Staff surveying is also done for Regionally Probited weeds, but the onus for follow up eradication is the landowners' responsibility and a Notice is automatically issued when Regionally Prohibited Weeds are found. I will be assisting in reviewing species information drafts on the different species drawn up by staff and this standardized process would be helpful back in Alberta. The meeting also had some valuable program evaluation processes for programs, operational as well as client based.

Later in the week I moved onto the topic of Weed Alert and Weed Spotter programs. Weed Alert is a process of preparing for potential foreign weed introductions and it will give me a chance to be directly involved with their weed risk assessment . The Weed Alert has forecasted introductions of Spotted Knapweed, Leafy Spurge and Cypress Spurge, which are common across Western Canada. This is the main weed related link under the department www.dpi.vic.gov.au/vro/weeds A guest speaker from New Zealand Dr. Peter Espie presented a shocking impact of Orange Hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum) and Mouse Eared Hawkweed (Hieracium pilosella) across New Zealand despite the early warnings as far back as 1884 of the potential impact on native range and natural eco systems. Dr. Espie's comments to eradicate any hawkweed species across all of Australia rather than repeating the NZ experience came with conviction and passion, a good speaker for a large weed function anywhere in North America.

I will be taking in some hawkweed surveying/control of the Snowy Mountain alps January 5-8, one of the few places where Orange Hawkweed has been found. Not bad place to visit either.

This week December 14 brought me back to Melbourne for a debriefing on the Mexican Feather Grass (Nassella tenuissima) Project. http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/dpi/vro/vrosite.nsf/pages/weeds_perennial_mexican_feathergrass MFG is a State Prohibited Weed across all of Australia and the discovery of the plant in a Melbourne Garden Center in May by one of the DPI staff brought out an unprecedented response plan/investigation that had far reaching impacts. The seed source is likely south america but the original seed packet came via Chicago and Germany and upon arriving in Australia the seeds were placed in pairs in a cube of organic material and fertilizer for further propagation in green houses. The investigation estimates that 11,500 plants came out of this process. Some greenhouses producing two viable plants from the cube further split the plants which complicated the calculation of how many plants may have been offered for sale. A totally inefficient trace back of the plants sold as a Mother's Day gift also made it difficult to trace the end destination, so the bulk of the activities, once the warehouses and retailers realized the seriousness, was to simply knock on doors, do media blitzs and assist with product recall. 6,900 plants were retrieved back but the work is ongoing. 5 court orders are in the works as there was an effort to cover up, or derail the investigation, which ultimately confirmed the plants sold as MFG via DNA analysis. There is a fair bit of interest in arid gardens, or extremely drought tolerant gardens, which brought on the interest in this plant. It is a tussock species, but relative to Serrated Tussock, which is estimated to cost Austalian agriculture 50,000 millions annually, the impact from MFG is estimated to be 6 times this amount, extremely prolific and totally unpalatable to any stock.

After Monday's debriefing I had a chance to see some country as I travelled across the top of Victoria to take in some surveying for the Regionally Prohibited Weed, Golden Dodder (Cuscuta campestris, a parasitic weed that feeds off of its host plant and has no clorophyll.) In Alberta we see this in sugar beets by another cuscuta species and there are others in this genus natually dispersed across the landscape. The survey was in center pivot irrigated alfalfa and white clover fields, which we surveyed on foot, good excercise after having sat in way too many meetings.

There is another interesting initiative that I had a chance to participate in this week's thursday, of engaging the local shires into doing some weed and pest control on their own roadsides. Considering the Alberta county based roadside vegetation management programs I found the reluctance among some of shires interesting. There will be other meetings coming up strategizing and attempting to win over 5 shires that have dug their heels in and I made short presentation to the working committee how our roadside peogram works in Clearwater County.

Now there is a bit of leisure also. Last weekend I had a chance to take in some field and game range shooting, which I have never tried before. I did some trap shooting many, many moons ago back in Denmark but this was a field simulated set-up with clay targets coming as rabbits in one station, high flying pheasants in another and double quail targets criss crossing at the same time. What I got out of it was a bunch of fun, a sore shoulder and a chance ot meet some neat rural aussie folks.

Last night I had a chance to put "gun" to practice as John Matthews (far right in center photo), who works for DPI also and I along with driver Bruce did some rabbit thinning around the research station. This is night shooting using a ute (pick-up) driven by Bruce and John and I in the back, one spotlighting the other shooting using a shotgun. The rabbits knew quickly what was up and chased back across the road to the tall grass very quickly once the spotlight was on them, so you had to be quick, both the spotlighter and the shooter. A fun night bringing in 3 hares and 15 rabbits in about 1 1/2 hrs.

Concluding this posting I wish you all a Very Merry Christmas and all the best for 2009. The forceast for Christmas is 28-30C, I will be with an international crowd invited to the Mibus house on the 25th. Pat Mibus is from Kentucky and other guests are from South Africa, Taiwan, Sweden and China.

With a Melbourne Christmas Tree on Swanston Street

Season Greetings

Kim