 |
We Live in a Special Part of the Great South-East |
 |
|
We Live in a Special Part of the Great South-East |
|
Mt Nebo and Mt Glorious are a wonderfully rich environment, part of the unique natural environment of the D'Aguilar Range. Our rainforests are very ancient in their structure and are unique in Australia, being on the doorstep of a large capital city - Brisbane. However they are also at risk because of the rapid growth of south-east Queensland.
The D'Aguilar Range is an ecosystem comprising a large 40,000Ha national park, D'Aguilar National Park (incorporating the formerly designated Brisbane Forest Park and a number of small national parks – Manorina, Boombana and Maiala), and private land. The range has the largest forest remnant in the Southern Moreton Region, but is threatened by the large and rapidly increasing populations of Brisbane, Pine Rivers and other shires. This threat extends beyond the forest itself since the range is a major watershed, containing as it does the headwaters of a number of important streams and rivers. On the western side of the range Brisbane Forest Park incorporates and protects part of Brisbane's water catchment, with other water courses like the South and North Pine Rivers rising on the eastern side. Healthy forests on the range protect these waterways against degradation from erosion, weed invasion and pollution. The rainforests of the range, especially those of Mt Glorious, are descendants of, and have a broad similarity in structure to ancient forests which existed 100 million years ago. They have great natural beauty and biological diversity and, like the eucalypt forests, contain many rare and threatened species.
We are the custodians for future
generations of the range, its landscapes and its plants and animals.
But
we need to work together to conserve high value areas, to prevent their
destruction by development and by exotic plants and animals, and to
restore
degraded areas. To avoid becoming another metropolitan suburb, a
coalition
of community, local and State governments is needed.
(Extract from:
Ros Leslie, UNESCO Mimburi Biosphere
Proposal: draft nomination, 2008)
Aboriginal land
management over the past 40000 years has had a significant influence on
the development of Australia’s native wildlife. Aboriginal people had a
strong association with their landscape, both socially and culturally.
The Dreaming represents a belief system that guides the interactions of
Indigenous people with their landscape and its living components. This
belief system positions people as part of the living environment which
they inhabited. The landscape was viewed as a living entity which
required respect and integration with people and their activities.
Early reference to
first people who inhabited the range is scanty. (See, for example,
Helen Horton's 1988, Brisbane's
Backdoor in Further
Reading.) The Jinibara was the tribe that overarched the clans of
the D’Aguilar Range. There are three groups consistently referenced in
connection with the D’Aguilar area. The Garumngar people occupied the
area from Moggill northward to Mt Mee (this covers most of the
D’Aguliar Range); the Dungidau people occupied territory north and west
of Mt Mee (northern part of the range westward) and the Turrbal people
occupied the area east of the range northwards to the North Pine River
(Horton 1988). The language group for the area was Wakka Wakka (Horton
1988). Aboriginal people
used a variety of plants for food and for medicine and for
manufacturing utensils. Animals were utilised in accordance with strict
lores. The landscape itself was alive and there were rules that
governed access to parts of the land that were restricted for spiritual
reasons. The landscape and its assets were strategically accessed and
managed to maintain perpetual health and wellbeing for all of the
communities that lived there.
During the successive occupation of European communities, Aboriginal communities were displaced by forceful removal, massacre, assimilation through religious and government policy and takeover of traditional lands. The process was so complete that the connection between present day Indigenous people and their past has been all but severed. Traditional links to landscape are still held by descendents but recognition by present governance authorities is very difficult to obtain. Presently, there is one existing registered Native Title claim (under the Native Title Act) held by the Jinibara, a tribe that overarches the clans of the Dungidau and Garumngar people.
Today there are few relics of thousands of years of occupancy. Bora rings are the most obvious physical remnant of a cultural past. Bora rings exist at Moggill, Keppera, Wights Mountain, Samsonvale, Laceys Creek, Mt Pleasant, Dayboro, Northbrook, England Creek, Dundas, Mt Esk Pocket and Oakey creek (Horton 1988). Other physical signs include tree scars and burial sites and some small artefacts have been found. On agreement, physical evidence of Aboriginal occupation has been kept confidential in an effort to protect and respect Aboriginal culture.
In the early 1900s,
people began riding up to Mt
Glorious from the eastern valleys below and began growing bananas and
other crops. The first
buildling at Mt Glorious, erected around 1909 (pictured right - picture
courtesy of Jim Byrne), was Tom Lindsay's
"Gentle Breezes".The Soldier Settlement Highlands
Estate was established just after World War I in the Mt Nebo area. The
smallest pieces were 80 acres, being divisions of a square mile. Those
people came to crop. The ethos of the time was that you had to sharpen
your axe, cut down the trees and either get a crop in or get some
stock.
If the trees were not cut, the lease could be lost. The Lands
Department
used to send an inspector out every June. If there sufficient
improvement,
you escaped the lease payment. So every June the settlers would go out
and ringbark a dozen trees to gain immunity from the lease payment.
There
is still evidence of this at Mt Nebo - large dead trees that have been
ringbarked, such as the large dead tallowwood across the road from the
Manorina camping area. The area later yielded large volumes of high
quality
timber, including Red Cedar and White Beech which helped sustain the
small
population that had settled the area. Modern "settlers" in the area now
include many who work "down in town" but seek the peace and cool
forests
of the range.
More details can be found in
Helen
Horton's history of the area. See Further
Reading.
|
Average Temperatures (Degrees celcius) |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Average Rainfall (millimetres) |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Lower down the range, towards Mt Nebo and Jolly's Lookout, average rainfall is slightly lower and average temperatures are slightly higher.
The
forests and flora are diverse, with a variety of ecosystems being
represented
on the range. At higher elevations (e.g. Mt Glorious) and sheltered
gullies
(e.g. Boombana National Park) rainforests are found. Figs, Quandong's,
Cedar and Palms thrive here, hosting orchids
and other epiphytes. Bordering these rich damp forests are wet
sclerophyll
forests - often with rainforest understorey, dominated by Blue gums (Eucalyptus
saligna), Brushbox (Lophostemum confertus) and Tallowwood (E.
microcorys). Dry sclerophyll forests dominate at lower elevations
and
on drier slopes. Grey gums, Stringybarks, Ironbarks, Apples (Angophora
spp.) and Casuarinas are common overstorey species here, with wattles,
hoveas, grass-trees, creepers and kangaroo grass below.
More comprehensive descriptions can be found in books listed in Further
Reading. A nice account of some of the history of flora research in
the area, compiled by Bruce Noble of BFP can be found here.
| Topknot Pidgeon Wonga Pigeon White-headed Pigeon Wompoo Dove Emerald Dove Brown Cuckoo-Dove Cuckoo-shrike Cicadabird Sacred Kingfisher Kookaburra King Parrot Crimson Rosella Pale-headed Rosella Rainbow Lorikeet Sulphur Crested Cockatoo Black Cockatoo Pacific Baza Grey Goshawk (DEH rating: Rare) Brown Goshawk Wedge-tailed Eagle Tawny Frogmouth Powerful Owl Mopoke Owl Sooty Owl Bronze Cuckoo Fantailed Cuckoo Channel-billed Cuckoo Noisy Pitta Australian Ground-thrush |
Variegated Wren Red-browed Firetail Yellow Robin Pink Robin Silvereye Spotted Pardalote Mistletoe Bird Yellow Thornbill Striated Thornbill White-browed Scrubwren Yellow-throated Scrubwren White-throated Treecreeper Red-browed Treecreeper (DEH rating: Rare) Varied Sitella Lewin's Honeyeater White-naped Honeyeater Eastern Spinebill Yellowfaced Honeyeater New Holland Honeyeater Scarlet Honeyeater Bell Miner Noisy Friarbird Golden Whistler Yellow Shrike-tit Leaden Flycatcher Black-faced Monarch Grey Fantail Rufous Fantail Willie Wagtail |
Grey Shike-thrush Little Shrike-thrush Varied Triller Olive-backed Oriole Eastern Whipbird Spangled Drongo Grey Butcherbird Pied Currawong Torresian Crow Black-backed Magpie Satin Bowerbird Regent Bowerbird Green Catbird Paradise Riflebird Brush Turkey |
Along with the abundant owls - often intent on a feed of frogs - possums, gliders and bandicoots are active at night. Dingos and goannas are common. A variety of snakes, skinks, spiders and other insects thrive in the sub-tropical heat.
As with the flora, numerous rare and endangered fauna species exist
in the area. (A more comprehensive account can be found in books listed
in Further
Reading.)
To show that there is still much to be discovered about the rain forests of the Range, here is an article from an American visitor, published in Mountain News in June 1997.
I've been living in Mt Glorious for the past five months, enjoying every sunrise I see over Moreton Bay or bushwalk I take from my house. But bushwalks and sunrises are only part of the reason that the Australian and American governments gave me a fellowship to come here. I finished a university degree in the States last June and I've been in Australia since October. Now, I'm studying the ants that live in the rainforest of Mt Glorious.
The most basic thing I hope to accomplish with my research is to identify the ant species present in the rainforest on the mountain. No one has yet done a comprehensive survey of the ants in this rainforest, so many of the species I find may not have been identified. The project is really exciting to me, because unlike the 30 or so species of ants I've found here, the area around Boston where I grew up in the States has far fewer species and they've all been identified and studied.
The focus of my ant survey is to compare the ants I find on the ground to the ants I find in the forest canopy. Previous research has shown that the canopy and ground environments of rainforests can be home to two distinct groups of insects. Some ant species live only on the ground or only in the canopy, while others appear to live in both locations. I'm interested in the degree of species overlap between the two environments, not only in terms of where the ants nest, but also where they feed.
To get a handle on these questions, I have set out honey (sugar source), tuna (protein source), and wheat (seed source) food baits in both locations. I put the baits out in the morning and check them in the afternoon and then during the night. Often by the time I have returned to the baits during the night, a wandering animal has taken the bait, leaving me antless! I also collect ants by hand with forceps, and by means of "pitfall" traps I set using plastic cups filled with alcohol. I've also extracted ants from leaf litter samples, by heating up leaves to dry them out, causing hidden ants to fall into a collection jar.
My study site is the State Forest past the ranger station, where I've chosen 12 trees to climb regularly. Climbing the trees is the best part of the work. I shoot a fishing arrow over a high branch (20-30m), using a compound bow. Using the fishing line, I haul over a temporary rope, which I leave in the tree between visits. When I want to climb the tree to put baits out or hand collect, I haul over a climbing rope, tie it off to the base of a tree, and climb the rope using mechanical ascenders designed for rock climbing. Because of the steep western slope, I get an incredible view from the top of my climbs!
I'm nearly finished with the collecting, and now I'm preparing voucher specimens of each ant species for a taxonomist in Canberra to identify. Once he identifies the species, I'll write up my results for publication in an ecological journal. So far, I've found species of ants that appear to live in the canopy, but feed on the ground, as well as ants nesting on the ground, that forage in the canopy. I've also found quite a few species in both locations, suggesting to me that compared with more tropical forests, there may not be as much of a distinction between the group of species in the two environments. We will see!
Aside from my research with the
ants,
I've been singing in the choir and teaching a weekly environmental
science
class at the Mt Nebo State School. Doing activities with the kids in
the
bush behind the school has been particularly enjoyable - hopefully for
the kids as well. Thanks to everyone who has made my time here
incredible
so far. For the last five months of my time in Australia, I'm trying to
follow the immortal words of Jerry Garcia, "Gone are the days we
stopped
to decide where we should go. We just ride". Dan
Go to: | Front Page | Top | Introduction | Next Chapter