Renaissance on Lanark 1999

Renaissance on Lanark Renaissance on Lanark LANARK BIRD LIST (1956–96) compiled by Murray Gunn, with John and Cicely Fenton R ENAISSANCE ON 1956 Purple-crowned Lorikeet Yellow-billed Spoonbill Crimson Rosella Swamp Harrier WOODLAND SPECIES Eastern Rosella Buff-banded Rail Whistling Kite Budgerigar Lewin’s Rail Brown Falcon Pallid Cuckoo Baillon’s Crake Peregrine Falcon Fan-tailed Cuckoo Australian Spotted Crake Red-rumped Parrot Horsfield’s Bronze-Cuckoo Purple Swamphen ANARK Blue-winged Parrot Shining Bronze-Cuckoo Dusky Moorhen L Barn Owl Southern Boobook Black-tailed Native-hen Yellow-rumped Thornbill Azure Kingfisher Eurasian Coot Red Wattlebird Laughing Kookaburra Common Greenshank Willie Wagtail Superb Fairy-wren Common Sandpiper The return of almost all Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike Striated Pardolote Red-necked Stint Australian Magpie Brown Thornbill Sharp-tailed Sandpiper the birds that once Australian Raven Striated Thornbill Curlew Sandpiper Little Raven Little Wattlebird Black-winged Stilt Welcome Swallow Yellow-faced Honeyeater Red-capped Plover inhabited the region to Singing Honeyeater Double-banded Plover WET GRASSLAND White-plumed Honeyeater Black-fronted Dotterel the Fentons’ grazing Black Swan White-naped Honeyeater Red-kneed Dotterel CONSERVATION THROUGH KNOWLEDGE Australian Shelduck New Holland Honeyeater Silver Gull property in Victoria’s Pacific Black Duck Tawny-crowned Whiskered Tern ACN 004 076 475 Grey Teal Honeyeater Clamorous Reed-Warbler 415 Riversdale Road, Hawthorn East, Vic. 3123 Western District is White-faced Heron Eastern Spinebill Little Grassbird Tel: (03) 9882 2622; Fax: (03) 9882 2677 Email: [email protected] Jacky Winter White-necked Heron Birds Australia Home Page: perhaps the greatest of Australian White Ibis Scarlet Robin WET GRASSLAND http://www.vicnet.net.au/~birdsaus Straw-necked Ibis Golden Whistler Cape Barren Goose Founded in 1901, Birds Australia (Royal Australasian Lanark’s many miracles. Brolga (disappeared until Grey Shrike-thrush Golden-headed Cisticola Ornithologists Union) is Australia’s oldest national ’96) Restless Flycatcher conservation organisation, dedicated to the study and Latham’s Snipe Grey Fantail GRASSLAND conservation of native birds and their habitat. New members Masked Lapwing Olive-backed Oriole Spotted Harrier are welcome. by Graeme O’Neill White-fronted Chat Masked Woodswallow Magpie-lark White-browed Fairy Martin Woodswallow 1976–96 arrivals Dusky Woodswallow Main photo: Wetlands, woodlands and GRASSLAND Grey Currawong WOODLAND SPECIES Published with the assistance of Bushcare – a key program of grazing sheep: Lanark is a model of the Commonwealth Government’s Natural Heritage Trust. Stubble Quail Red-browed Finch Little Eagle sustainable farming. Bushcare has the ambitious goal of reversing the long-term Black-shouldered Kite Tree Martin Common Bronzewing Photo by David Neilson decline in the quality and extent of Australia’s native vegetation Wedge-tailed Eagle Rufous Songlark Gang-gang Cockatoo Insets (from left): Stubble Quail, Eastern Silvereye Rainbow Bee-eater communities, in order to conserve biodiversity and contribute Black Falcon to the ecologically sustainable management of natural Spinebill, Straw-necked Ibis Nankeen Kestrel Spotted Pardalote resources. The vision and commitment of the Fenton family at Photos: (quail and spinebill) by Graeme Banded Lapwing WETLAND White-browed Scrubwren Lanark shows that ambitious goals are achievable within Chapman; (ibis) by Tom Putt Flame Robin Blue-billed Duck White-eared Honeyeater acceptable time-frames, even in seriously degraded landscapes. Richard’s Pipit Musk Duck Pink Robin Local action on a national scale, with the support of Brown Songlark Australian Wood Duck Eastern Yellow Robin Bushcare and other programs of the Natural Heritage Trust, Australasian Shoveler Varied Sittella can make a real difference in restoring our rich heritage of plant and animal wildlife communities; maintaining the AERIAL Chestnut Teal Rufous Whistler productive capacity of our land and water; and ensuring White-throated Needletail Pink-eared Duck Rufous Fantail prosperity and quality of life for future generations. Fork-tailed Swift Hardhead White-winged Triller Australasian Grebe White-winged Chough Hoary-headed Grebe Bassian Thrush 1956–76 arrivals Great Crested Grebe Darter WETLAND WOODLAND SPECIES Little Pied Cormorant Magpie Goose Brown Goshawk Little Black Cormorant Plumed Whistling-Duck Australian Hobby Great Cormorant Freckled Duck Diamond Dove Australian Pelican Intermediate Egret Yellow-tailed Black- Little Egret Spotless Crake Great Egret Wood Sandpiper Wingspan is the quarterly membership magazine of Birds Cockatoo Australia. Additional copies of this supplement Long-billed Corella Nankeen Night Heron Banded Stilt are available from the National Office. Galah Australasian Bittern Sulphur-crested Cockatoo Glossy Ibis WET GRASSLAND Printed on recycled paper. Musk Lorikeet Royal Spoonbill Brolga (returned ’96) Supplement to Wingspan, vol. 9, no. 1, March 1999 ii Renaissance on Lanark Renaissance on Lanark iii LANARK IS A GRAZING PROPERTY like no other in Victoria. It’s not just the visual differences – the patchwork of farm forestry plantations, the angular lines of Transformation invertebrates in the moist ground between the house 1963 view of Lanark, pre- Below: October 1992 view of Thirty years ago Lanark was a typical Western and the lake’s edge have brought the soil to a fine wetland restoration and Lanark, with wetlands at shelter belts interspersed with pockets of native woodland, or the chain of restored District grazing property. The wool industry was tilth – even if they have made a vegetable garden mass tree-planting – high water mark. Note the natural wetlands curving north and east around the homestead. ravaged by inappropriate indigenous plantings and booming. In good years, the Fentons were impossible. The green, tree-filled landscape initially commands attention, but it is only when grazing. (Photo is taken aquatic species around the producing nearly 200 bales of wool from the At dusk one of mainland Australia’s rarest from opposite angle to that wetlands, and sheep, the visitor’s car engine falls silent that Lanark’s distinctive signature becomes audible: property’s 800 hectares, and raising fat lambs for the mammals, the Eastern Barred Bandicoot Perameles on p. II. See shearing shed shelterbelts and farm domestic market on its improved pastures. gunii, forages quietly in the grassland and associated above house.) forestry plantations in the birds – hundreds of birds, of many species. Their calls emanate from every quarter, the But like most Australian rural properties, it understorey of the native woodland around the Photo by John Fenton background. All these cheerful symphony of an environment in irrepressible health, inviting – insisting – that systems – agricultural, could veer wildly between plenty and hardship. On homestead. At night, from the wetlands, frogs – forestry, aquatic habitat, the visitor be silent, be still … and listen. a wall of the Fentons’ home is an aerial photo, among the most sensitive of all wildlife habitat, etc. – are Something remarkable has occurred on Lanark, in the undulating basalt country taken in late summer, 1963. The image shows a creatures to environmental intrinsically interlinked to property ravaged by inappropriate grazing, almost disturbance – maintain a create a more ecologically of Victoria’s Western District, south-west of Branxholme. In little more than four bereft of grass or tree cover. The homestead is nocturnal racket. And by day, and agriculturally decades its owners, John and Cicely Fenton, and their sustainable system overall. marooned in a stark red landscape, estranged from in the skies above the farm Photography by Lindsay family, have transformed their once-ravaged sheep the green, living world. and from every tree across the Stepanow/photo supplied by property. Through the diversification of traditional grazing In 1967, an El Nino-induced drought sent property, birdsong attests to Thomson Hay & Associates and cropping with large-scale farm forestry, and the Lanark spiralling into economic and environmental the miraculous transformation crisis. During the drought, many of John’s close that has occurred on Lanark. Inset: Cicely and John Fenton. restoration of natural habitat, they have demonstrated that Photo by David Neilson friends, leading farmers and graziers, suffered consid- it is possible to develop systems of farming that are both erable physical, emotional and financial hardship. Tree planting more ecologically and agriculturally sustainable. John Fenton was chastened: if the ‘best’ graziers When the NSW Surveyor- could be so vulnerable to nature’s vicissitudes, there General, Major Thomas had to be something seriously wrong with the way Mitchell visited the region in in which the grazing industry operated. It was a 1836, his description of salutary warning that the production levels of the western Victoria’s sunlit eucalypt woodlands and occasional ‘boom’ years were unsustainable, and that grasslands as ‘a nobleman’s park on a gigantic scale’ the human and environmental costs of pursuing triggered a rush for grazing land in the area. these levels through the lean years in-between were By the 1840s, the new settlers were too high. systematically clearing western Victoria’s woodlands That insight, and Lanark’s own plight, precip- and draining its wetlands. An extensive article from itated a radical change in the way John managed

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