“The Alpine Sustainability Forums are an established annual highlight of Australia’s alpine industry calendar. It is a “must attend” event for key people involved in alpine resorts across Australia. It brings together delegates from resorts across Australia to listen, workshop, and be exposed to leading edge ideas and actions”.
This year’s forum is being held at Mt Buller.
Details of the Forum, including Registration Booklet and Registration Form, are available here.
A bit of a reflection on mid autumn cloudy landscapes of subdued colours and moody feelings, as we get through one more fire season and almost out the other side of ‘burning’ season.
More here.
Now this is more like it! Mountains Cycling Challenge. Saturday 2nd May 2009 
This event will now form part of the bushfire recovery effort. Help us recover from the Black Saturday bushires.
A fantastic new event organised in conjunction with CycleSport Victoria. This is a major event for participation and race road cyclists that will also include fun activities for all the supporting crews and families of those actually participating. There will great participation and race prizes on offer.
Marysville Lake Mountain Bushfire Recovery Challenge Saturday May 2 8:30am – approx 4pm
135km participation ride starting near Marysville taking in Buxton, Taggerty, Thornton, Eildon, Alexandra back through Taggerty, Buxton, Marysville through to and up to Lake Mountain resort. A fantastic scenic route with some hill challenges…..are you ready!!!
A shorter 70km ride is available. Start in Marysville, the ride turn point will be at Taggerty, finish will be at Lake Mountain.
Full details here.
To borrow a phrase from TV advertising, the current edition of the Australian Alps National Parks ‘news from the alps’ newsletter is a “must see” for anyone with an interest in our alpine environments.
The theme is climate change, and the newsletter pulls together a summary of the threats – and various complications that come with these threats – facing Australia’s alpine parks as a result of global warming.
A rather sobering take home message includes the following: “no longer will we be effective in building the Alps’ resilience simply by preserving all species in their current locations, but rather we need to make space and opportunities for them to self-adapt, re-organise, move. And we need to continue our efforts to remove the pest plant and animal species from the picture as this is a stress and a threat that we can control and minimise (unlike increased fire or reduced rainfall). We need to press on with connectivity conservation, again in the interests of space and adaptive movement, and we should also be poring over maps to help us spot potential refugia to focus our efforts on – sweet spots where Mother Nature, even under the influence of climate change, is more likely to be kind to biodiversity under threat”.
Surely, as we struggle with in-action on climate change both at the national and state levels, the work being done by a range of agencies and individuals across the alps becomes ever more important. As the editor notes, the many people profiled in this edition are doing visionary and necessary work and “this will make a profoundly positive difference to what would otherwise be a confronting future”.
You can download the newsletter here.
A profile of legendary activist Charley Daniel.
The hill country of East Gippsland is probably not the place where you would expect to find an environmentally friendly printing service. But in the small township of W Tree, north of Buchan, Charley and his partner Jenny Doran have been running their specialty printing business for many years.
Charley has spent his life successfully fighting for the environment. He has a deep and passionate commitment to change through individual action. He has expressed this through his activism and his printing business for decades now.
.
You can find the profile here.
From the premier’s website:
“Entry to all of Victoria’s national parks and metropolitan parks will be made free of charge to encourage people to get active in the great outdoors, Premier John Brumby announced today.
Opening the international Healthy Parks Healthy People Congress at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, Mr Brumby said the health benefits for people getting out and exploring the natural world far outweighed the benefits of collecting entry fees from parks.
“Victoria has one of the best park networks in the world and we want them to be as accessible as possible to all Victorians,” Mr Brumby said.
“From 1 July 2010 there will be no entry fee to any national park or metropolitan park in Victoria. Parks Victoria estimates that removing entry fees will increase visitor numbers by 25 per cent to 50 per cent at most sites.”
National parks that will be free are Wilsons Promontory, Mount Buffalo, Baw Baw, Mornington Peninsula, Yarra Ranges (Mount Donna Buang) and Point Nepean as well as Werribee Park, Coolart, National Rhododendron Gardens and William Ricketts Sanctuary metropolitan parks.
Surely this is a good thing… it means more people are likely to get out in the parks (and the premier has included a review to see if top up funds are needed to back fill loss of gate revenue). It should be especially useful in the case of Buffalo national park, which has been suffering because of loss or closure of key infrastructure in recent years.
Mr Brumby said encouraging people to get out and about in Victoria’s parks was good for community wellbeing and good for regional economies.
You can find the full release here.
“The forces of destruction grow exponentially, like compound interest. It is my hope that we can make the trends to sustainability also grow exponentially, at a higher rate. If we can do this, there may be a future.
Can we prevent disaster? No, because it has already started. The 173 Victorians killed by the Black Saturday fires were killed by climate change.
We can mitigate climate change, reduce the generation of deadly pollutants, nourish and maintain soil and water and other essentials of life. We can work to adapt life to cope with the changes that are inevitably on the way, that are here already. As I said, if the growth toward sanity can overtake the current growth toward insanity, then we have a hope of salvaging something, of creating the seed of a decent future.
But this needs a complete culture change. It means rejecting greed as the primary motive force.
We can do it in principle. In practice?”
The full interview is here.
“An epic all-wheel-drive battle for the 2010 Lake Mountain Sprint podium has been fought and won by the White Hot Lamborghini Gallardo of nephew-uncle combo Jason and John White, only seconds ahead of Steve Jones and Ben Searcy in their LF performance Nissan R35 GT-R”.
Well, thats very exciting for them, I’m sure. But honestly, don’t we have enough places for people to rip around in hotted up cars in Victoria already, without races in the mountains?
Anyway, the Sprint has been and gone again this year, and the next event up on the mountain is a mountain bike trail building working bee on Saturday 24th April.
The resort is calling for people to help: the “Lake Mountain plateau provides a great setting for a bike ride. Mountain bike riding has been identified in recent years as a rapidly growing sport with the number of mountain bikes being sold each year increasing. Whilst Lake Mountain has an extensive cross country ski trail network available offering a perfect platform for beginners, the process is underway to create an extensive trail network offering trails for all levels of ability”.
To get involved or find out more, check here.
This book was published in 2009 and is a wonderful and evocative appreciation for old growth in Australia – in all it’s forms, including alpine trees across Tasmania and the Australian Alps.
It brings together the work of 16 photographers in a beautifully presented book, drawn together by Mornington Peninsula-based photographer Peter McConchie.
A review can be found here.
Next week, Melbourne will host the inaugural International Healthy Parks Healthy People Congress 2010. This “ground breaking event explores the many ways nature and parks significantly contribute to our health and wellbeing”. It has a great line up of speakers, although sadly the $1,100 registration fee will exclude lots of folks who would otherwise attend.
You can find details on the program here.
As a strange side note, Sir Gustav Nossal AC is the Congress Patron. Given he has been a vocal supporter of nuclear power – which necessitates the destruction of indigenous lands here in Australia and the dumping of waste on indigenous communities – who are struggling to protect their country – he does seem like a strange choice of patron.
Out beyond the Bogong High Plains, and about a 45 minute drive north of Omeo is the lovely valley of Glen Wills. This small community is increasingly gaining a reputation as a place where low impact eco tourism provides a reliable income for locals. From ski touring and walking on the High Plains to rafting on the Mitta Mitta and a range of other activities, Glen Valley is a real oasis.
We are currently working with some local land owners and tourism operators to get a number of logging coupes removed from the cutting schedule. This is partly because there will be considerable visual impacts along a section of the Alpine Walking Track (the major trail that goes from Walhalla to Canberra) and also because there are plans to harvest directly above the water supply of the Glen Wills Mountain Retreat.
Please check here for details on a letter you can send to the Minister for Climate Change and Environment, Gavin Jennings.
Many thanks.
W Tree is a small vibrant community of about 85 people in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains in East Gippsland, Victoria, about 80 km from Lakes Entrance and 20 kms north of Buchan.
W Tree is the home of two ecovillages – Mt Murrindal co-op and Sunrise Farm, one Tibetan Buddhist center , a number of different ecosensitive businesses and very creative & entreprenurial people .
It is surrounded by forest, both rainforest areas and State Forest. Rainforest in the area includes such species as Muttonwood, Lilly Pilly, Sassafras and Sweet Pittosporum. The Snowy River National Park and the Alpine National Park are both within an hours drive, the world famous Buchan Caves are 20 minutes away. The Snowy River is popular with both tourists and locals, and rafting and whitewater trips are a fantastic way to see the magnificent gorges.
In 2009 they hosted a spirit of place festival (details here).
For further information on the community, check here.
Mountain Journal 
Recent Comments