Wanarra in bloom
Supporters are set to protect Wanarra, allowing science, knowledge and best-practice conservation to safeguard its biodiversity.
After a piece of bush has been chained and burned, it can look like nothing but bare sand. But almost immediately – if left alone – flowers, bulbs and native plants begin to come up.
I was always fascinated by this as a kid. I grew up on a farm in mid-west Western Australia, where active clearing was still happening in the region, some of which my family contributed to. It was what was done then – before we fully knew its impact.
Next door, there was a public reserve where I’d spend hours wandering its tracks, drawn to the sandplain vegetation – the lower and pricklier, the better. I came to understand just how rich those systems are, how much diversity sits close to the ground and over time I naturally gravitated towards a career in conservation.
One of my first jobs felt like a full karmic segue: I was helping to implement land clearing controls in the state.
I’ve had a number of happy places since, but these days it’s a patch of Box-Ironbark forest I bought near Castlemaine, on Dja Dja Wurrung Country, around 140 km north-west of Melbourne, and the surrounding Muckleford State Forest.
Yellow gums rise above a dense understorey of wattles, grevilleas and hakeas, and a small creek runs through it. I saw it flow for the first time in March. The water was only about 10 cm deep, but it filled the pools along the creek line and suddenly the frogs were everywhere. Creakers, bonkers, tickers – each with their own call. They would have been under logs or in cracks in the ground, waiting for that moment.
There’s a cheeky antechinus that lives near my woodpile. At first, it kept just out of sight, circling the tree whenever I moved closer, like playing hide and seek. But when I eventually stopped and stayed still, it returned to foraging and even darted up the trunk beside me.
A lot of people say nature renews them. I’ve found that to be true. The more time I spend there, the more there is to notice – a goshawk passing overhead, the behaviours of kangaroos, birds identifiable by shape and flight. It’s absorbing and enriching.
Ben is part of our Volunteer Advisory Committee, helping to create meaningful moments for our diverse volunteers and scale our conservation impact. Learn more about our national volunteer program.
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