Darlot Creek photopoint

Darlot Creek, Homerton in September 2017

For over a decade I've been taking photographs from a bridge over Darlot Creek in Homerton, Victoria.

I've posted blogs several times here and here and here.

It's been a very interesting project. The creek is never the same and has changed quite a bit over just that short period of time. It has never dried up because there are springs and swamps upstream, and it supports a suite of plants and animals that has interested scientists from time to time. And it has huge cultural connections to the local Gunditjmara people who call the creek Killara.

The photo, below, was taken ten years ago just after the bluegum plantation was established on what had previously been a paddock. Stock were able to graze right into the creek. Willows were a problem then and continue to be in this section of the creek. In a big Victorian Government study of the Glenelg-Hopkins catchments this was the finding:

Invasive willows were not a significant problem with the exception of reaches 38 and 39 on the Merri River in the Hopkins basin and reach 9 on Darlot Creek in the Portland basin where a number of willows were recorded. #

Darlot Creek, January 2007

The next ten or twenty years will interesting because, at least in this section of the creek, the bluegum plantations mean that stock are not grazing along the west banks. The east side is not such an issue because it is part of an old rocky lava flow from Mount Eccles (Budj Bim).

#. https://www.water.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0025/34819/ISC_Part11_Glenelg_Hopkins.pdf