Native vegetation at Crystal Brook

The preservation, protection, or destruction of remnant native vegetation in or near Crystal Brook

I intend that this page will deal with matters concerning the preservation of remnant native vegetation and the closely related matter of control of weeds (including feral trees).

Cemetery area

The first two photos on the right deal with a closed road immediately east (up-hill) of the cemetery. They show how the native vegetation along this closed road have been grazed as high as sheep can reach.

The sheep take all leaves of the trees and shrubs that they can. They also eat any seedlings as soon as they come above the ground level. Remnant native vegetation in this area will gradually disappear so long as grazing continues.

These photos were taken in May and June 2005.
The photo on the right shows sheep grazing on the closed road in June 2005.

The Port Pirie Regional Council owns this land. They have rented it to a private landholder. I believe that the Council has a moral, and perhaps a legal, responsibility to protect remnant native vegetation. In this case they are obviously not fulfilling that responsibility.

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Goulter Road

The photo on the right shows how much more of the native vegetation than necessary was bulldozed for the building of a new fence. In some places, as shown in this photo, there was very little vegetation spared.

This photo was taken in June 2005.

Destroyed by grader

The marker on the top photo, I believe, indicates that this section of the road has significant remnant native vegetation. You can see how the grader has gone in immediately behind the notice to scrape the vegetation off the roadside.

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The second photo shows more damage done by the grader a little further south.

To judge by these photos the Port Pirie Regional Council cares nothing for remnant native vegetation.

Bowman Park pepper trees

Pepper trees are quite acceptable in the right place. There being so many along the Brook at Bowman Park means that native trees are crowded out and groundwater is removed and therefore is unavailable for native trees further down the Brook. Many redgums further down the Crystal Brook, most of them over a hundred years old, are highly stressed due to insufficient water.

The photo on the right was taken in April 2004. In addition to some native redgums it shows a few of the feral pepper trees close to the foot bridge on the Crystal Brook at Bowman Park.

I intend to leave the pepper trees near the main gate, those around the old homestead, and those around the barbeque area. Of course I would be interested in hearing anyone's opinion on this project; my email address is at the top of this page.

From the beginning I kept the Port Pirie Regional Council fully informed of what I was doing. As far as I have been able to find out Council has no development plan for Bowman Park. They have an unwritten policy of removing feral pepper trees when they come across them and when their workers have the time. They have never, so far as I know, removed a single pepper tree from Bowman Park.

The work I have done has not cost Council a cent. In May 2005 I was instructed by a Council representative to stop my work. The only reasons given were that the herbicide that I was using (Garlon) was not registered for use on waterways, and that I might poison myself or someone else. (Garlon has very low toxicity to animals and it is going into tree trunks, not into the waterway.)

I will continue poisoning the trees until given a rational reason to stop.

There are other trees that I would tend to class as 'woody weeds' also at Bowman Park. These include box thorns, willows, and (non native) pines. I may, at some later date, kill these too.

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Greening Crystal Brook

Turn this... This is a section of the top road to Bowman Park that is crying out for a bit more greening. If you would like to be involved please contact me at the email address on top of this page.
into this... I (Dave Clarke) intend to plant some of the remaining bare roadsides around Crystal Brook to make them look like this section of Binny Road (near Frith Road), which was planted around 1992. (The Eucalyptus woodwardii in the foreground is rather older than the other trees and shrubs.)

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