Time is something to value, though day-to-day priorities often dictate use of this resource. This was true for us, having lived on our property for over twenty years, we had spent most of our time away for work or leisure. At retirement, time suddenly became flexible, and we began to see our property in a new light. This was our place of being, not something to escape.

Nature though had not stood still in the time of our abandonment. Our two acres of bushland was infested by a diverse range of weeds covering ground to canopy. Balloon Vine was well established and our gullies were strewn with Yellow Bells, Tipuana, Leopard trees, Chinese Elm, Inch Weed, Coral Berry, Cobblers Pegs, Creeping Lantana and Mother of Millions. Our native plants were struggling to breathe.

Desire to alter the balance kicked in and the initial steps of our journey took us down an ill-informed path. Eradicating the weeds in one big effort and replanting was our goal. Two important things occurred in this early stage that altered our path.

Firstly, we joined Land for Wildlife. Through the wonderful expertise and encouragement of our LfW Officer, Amanda Maggs, we received critical resources to understand our property. This included the aggregate wisdom of those who were much further down the path of bush regeneration, as well as a dose of common sense. Critical, was acceptance that weeds can play a temporary role, and an approach of pacing weed removal with native regrowth can be beneficial to fauna and flora.

Secondly, we met Jim Williams, an experienced bush regenerator in the Bradley Method. He mentored us in this very gentle method of re-balancing nature so that native plants get the advantage. It is based on the premises of not over clearing, working from areas of native strength (determined by both overall quantity and diversity of native plants) and minimal disturbance. In practice, it involves careful hand weeding and manual removal, ringbarking, and ‘hooding’ (black plastic bag over stump) of weed trees and vines without the use of any herbicides. Bradley ‘islands’ are created, and these are weeded, then maintained allowing the native plants to strengthen and work outwards expanding the size of each island.

Ultimately, we are undertaking a balance of our initial thinking alongside the Bradley Method. Across two thirds of the property, we have established islands that are being maintained. Weed sterilisation is being undertaken around the perimeter of these islands, allowing them to naturally expand. In the remaining third – where natural regeneration was going to be the most challenging – we have cleared the weeds, or kept them sterile and planted around 300 native plants to supplement existing habitat.

There are six gullies on our property, two fairly major ravines with the remainder being smaller.  Steep slopes are a dominant feature with access being challenging – there is a 30 metre drop from highest to lowest point. To ensure less disturbance, we made the decision to create paths to all the slopes. In some cases, these are to be well-used paths, and others will be transitory, to be abandoned when no longer needed. We use our main gully floor as a ‘highway’. Initially, the floor was impassable with weed trees and vines; it even had a piece of Mount Crosby-Brisbane water pipe from the 1950s!

It is almost three years since we began our regeneration project, and at the start we were warned that it would take 10-20 years to reap the full benefit. What motivated us was that as the native plants gained advantage the amount of effort would be reduced in return for a beautiful, native bush property reward. Fastidiously, we worked on our islands, created paths, sterilised weeds and planted for the first 12 months. In the dry spring of 2023, we resigned ourselves to the fact we may be facing a year or more of drought, and we reined in our expectations.

Nature, however, surprised us with bountiful summer and autumn seasons. Our islands are lush with native regrowth. One island alone (30m2) has 45 different native plant species, including 35 new eucalypt saplings. A slope previously full of Yellow Bells is now covered in Basket Grass, with ferns emerging in every crevice of the gully floor. Foambark saplings that self-seeded in the first year are growing across the property, alongside numerous Soap Tree saplings and another hundred or so saplings of other tree varieties.

There is an abundance of naturally occurring dry rainforest and open eucalypt forest native tree species on the property, including, for example, around 20 vulnerable Lloyd’s Olive (Notelaea lloydii), and 40 of the fascinating ‘batwing’ leaf shaped Pine Mountain Coral (Erythrina numerosa). However, it’s the native ground-covers which have taken our breath away. In the areas which were subjected to 20 years of spraying and mowing (of predominantly weeds), sweeping meadows of native grasses, sedges and herbs have come to life – with no planting at all.

Nature’s own transformation from ‘mowed to meadow’.

So far, 23 different native grasses and 8 different sedges have been observed – here is just a sample.

Article by Tim and Cathie Albers
Land for Wildlife member
Mount Crosby, Brisbane City Council

[Part 2 will be in the May 2025 edition]

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