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Mountain Journal

Environment, news, culture from the Australian Alps

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Cam Walker

I work with Friends of the Earth, and live in Castlemaine in Central Victoria, Australia. Activist, mountain enthusiast, telemark skier, volunteer firefighter.

Buffalo skyway proposal – community forums

The Alpine Shire Council  continues to push forward into its investigation about whether the skyway project should proceed (don’t mind the minor details like whether they could ever get approvals for a major infrastructure project inside a national park, or who is actually going to fund it).

There will be two information sessions in May:

  • an “Open House” Information & Feed Back Session on Wednesday May 19, 2010 from 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM. Alpine Visitor Information Centre, Bright. Public open house session. Everyone welcome to visit and comment.
  • and at Appin Park Rotary Club Wangaratta. Thursday May 20, 2010 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM. This will be an information and Feedback Session.
Looking over the Razorback towards Buffalo Plateau

For full details on the forums please check here.

Interestingly, the ‘media‘ section on the skyways website only contains positive reports on the skyway proposal.

Further (independent) opinion on the skyway proposal here.

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Mountain Church

As we wait for winter snow, I stumbled on this short story from the Mountain Gazette by D. Morgan Miller that sums up much of the appeal of getting out in the backcountry:

“Ritual.

Image: Mountain Gazette

Ritual is what I need.

Sitting here in this beloved mountain temple, on my nifty little ski bench in the back of the car, the dressing ritual in this special place has every exhalation feeling lighter and more peaceful. My spirit has already started climbing out of the cellar. Donning my pack, boots and skis, I’m dressing my body to go sacrifice to the mountains for just a short while”.

You can find the story here.

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Snow Australia’s new commercial from Warren Miller

The theme of the ads being ‘ski here in Australia rather than NZ’. Certainly makes sense on environmental grounds, way lower carbon footprint.  Even better, catch the bus!

(The video is here. Prepare yourself for lots of ads!)
Warren Miller’s current film is showing at Australian resorts over opening weekend in June.

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Snowy River environmental flows

The Weekly Times is running with the story on getting environmental flows back into the Snowy River:

crossing the headwaters of the Snowy

“The greatest hurdle to reviving the Snowy River’s flows could be removed for little more than $3.3 million.

That’s the estimated cost of extinguishing a 56,000-megalitre water debt that must be repaid before the iconic river’s flows can be raised above a trickle this spring.

If the debt is not repaid the Snowy River will once again be capped at 4 per cent of its natural flow in 2010-11, almost 10 years after the inter-government deal was struck to rescue the river.

East Gippsland Independent MP Craig Ingram, who put Labor into power on the back of its promise to revive the Snowy’s flows, said it was time to extinguish the debt and boost this spring’s flows”.

Your can find the Times story here.

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Stirling Alpine Link

Mt Cobbler from Stirling summit

Mt Stirling, adjacent to Mt Buller, is a unique natural landscape with dramatic vistas of Victoria’s alpine area.

Popular with cross-country skiers, bushwalkers, campers and school groups, it is also home to many threatened plant and animal species.

The Victorian National Parks Association has launched a push for the Mt Stirling area to be managed as a national park by linking it to the Alpine National Park and handing its management to Parks Victoria.

It can then be managed as an integral part of Victoria’s largest national park, improving ecological management, recreation experiences and the overall integrity of our alpine region.

You can find a fact sheet and details on how to take action here.

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Alpine Resorts Sustainablity Forum 2010 – Friday 7 May 2010

“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.

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autumn cloud & fire landscapes

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.

smoke from control burns, Buffalo Plateau
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Marysville Lake Mountain Bushfire Recovery Challenge

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.

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news from the alps – climate change

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.

Main Range, Snowies, NSW

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.

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profile: Charley Daniel, W Tree, VIC

Home of Black Rainbow Printing (Snowy River Country)

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.

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You can find the profile here.

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Premier announces free entry to all Vic national parks

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.

Buffalo Plateau

“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.

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An interview with Bob Rich, Moora Moora, VIC

“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.

Moora Moora from the air

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.

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