Busy bee report 9^th of February 2025.

The Busy Bee last Sunday morning once again was a great success with just under twenty people turning out in near perfect conditions. A big welcome to first time attendee Geoff. We hope you enjoyed your first outing and will be back for many more. We certainly appreciated having you join us.

Carmel, Terry, Jackie, Coralie and Sally carried on with the wonderful work at the shade houses. They started by weeding all three shade houses before potting up 101 seedlings (45 Calothamnus quadrifidus, 50 Melaleuca radula and 6 stray Corymbia calophylla). Thanks to their efforts, our tally of seedlings for planting out this winter (already impressive) is steadily growing.

Steph and Margaret headed west from the Weir carpark and started weeding along the edge of the path from the stone bridge near the Little Dam toward the Cascades and then along the Cascades toward its lowest point. Initially, the focus was on fleabane and stinkwort then Watsonia (being careful to collect all the seeds developed on the spires), black berry nightshade, and narrow leafed cotton bush of which there were a few large specimens in full flower and seeding beautifully. Along the way we discovered a couple of well-established blackberry vines and some smaller plants, some embedded in the creek bed. Max joined them in locating the bases of the plants and treating them (cut and paint) with glyphosate. 

Dick brought his little digger down and set to work on moving the pile of silt at the edge of the weir down along the southern side of the weir to fill the gully there and leave the area flat, tidy and ready for planting later in the year. While he was beavering away Max and Dan loaded up Steph’s trailer with the Paspalum cut back by Nick earlier in the week – there was a vast quantity of this rampant weed which had to be removed before Dick could fill the area with silt.  Later on Carl and Geoff arrived and helped Dan with the Paspalum removal. A big thank you to Steph’s family for taking all that weed away to the Transfer Station later that afternoon. We hadn’t realised how much valuable granite rock was buried in the silt and so I scurried about stockpiling those for later use as Dick uncovered them.

Mark and Paul went to work on repairing riffles between the lower flowdam and the Cascades. It is just a fact of life that repairs will be an ongoing activity as removing rocks to produce a sudden flush of water (or building walls up to create a bigger pond) are attractive pursuits for the young and some not so young. Eight riffles were restored, some in what are now quite awkward locations due to the success of our planting programs over the years. They also reported back on areas they encountered where more rock work for erosion control is required.

For a while it seemed we wouldn’t have enough people to tackle the pruning of the pathways but John valiantly set off into the wilderness armed with his weapons and cleared all the pathways from the Falls through to the eastern end.  All prunings were discretely placed in the bush so as to minimise any unsightly, soon to be dry and dead, material.bane John also added in some weeding along the way. He removed the fleabane on the north bank of the stream in the area near the Falls where we planted over the last couple of years.

At 10:30 Angie called us in for a well deserved rest and some refreshments. As usual she had a formidable range of treats to tempt our palates and we all settled down for a delightful morning tea and a natter. A cheeky kookaburra stalked proceedings and finally swooped down to snatch a biscuit. Not sure if he liked what he got as I don’t think it would be his usual fare.

A big thanks to Dick for bringing down the new equipment trailer that he and grandson, Hayden, built for us. It is custom designed for the range of equipment we require each Busy Bee – and elsewhere – and it is a very fine piece of work.

Every Busy Bee we need someone to man the marquee and fulfil the role of First Aid Officer. Joanna does that for us every month except for rare absences. It is vital to the success of our Busy Bees and includes talking to visitors and helping late arrivals to find where we are working. Thank you Joanna – we are truly grateful.

Our next Busy Bee will be on the 9^th of March and we look forward to seeing you there.