An early start to the day to reduce any inconveniences due to free camping in Dwellingup. The good burghers should be happy that I stayed in town to have a full breakfast at the Blue Wren Cafe where Shelley encouraged shy me to contact people I used to work with.
First up was the town crier, aka Pam who kindly reminded me that during my ten years in the town I had been a shy soul who avoided integrating with the locals. Still Pam and I now share a dentist (props to David) so we are nearly related.
Next was Joe Kinal. Joe is the last survivor of the eight researchers who were there when I started. He is still collecting data on stream flows and groundwater tables in the native forest. This data is never worth any government agencies allocating significant resources to collecting in these straightened times but is essential to being able to predict how the forest and its streams will react to the long-term decline in rainfall and rising temperatures that have been happening over the last fifty years. And are predicted to continue to happen.
Just to note that Victoria drastically reduced its catchment modelling and research during the Jeff Kennett years. The result was that twenty years later Melbourne water was caught unprepared for the huge reduction in inflows to reservoirs during the drought of the early naughties. Neither did have an in-house voice in their ear warning them that over-stocked, drying catchments will burn hotter, easier and with huge soil erosion and nutrient release problems unless thinned. Guess what happened?
As much as governments don’t like inconvenient data, collecting that data saves money and embarrassment years later when things go pear shaped.
After sharing stories of work colleagues of long ago (Don Devlin and Robin, I promise that work on root networks of Banksia grandis will be written up!) it was onwards.
A final circuit of Dwellingup to see the old house I lived in. The timber tent (freezing cold in winter, with a chip heater for the hot water for the first few years and an open fireplace that didn’t do much but provide a warm glow) looks almost the same except for a coat of paint (was iron oxide in linseed oil, now standard cream white) and the hydrangea bush is gone. Also, Ian Freeman’s goat is not eating cardboard boxes and ignoring the lush kykuyu grass in the yard.
50 km on to Boddington. I don’t remember that many hills!
On the way, I was amazed by the extra territory dug up by the Worsley bauxite mine. Humungous!
At the Hotham River crossing I met a couple of vegetation surveyors who turned out to be Mattiske Consulting. I had been seeing Libby’s work and sometimes using it for years so gave her and Troy a card and left them to climbing through the undergrowth.
Finished at Boddington Caravan Park. Very nice green park, nice curators and a pleasant lagoon on the Hotham River at the bottom of the garden. A shame that the river is so salty that virtually no fish live in it. Looks nice though and plenty of fog in the morning.