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

Swamp photopoint

Swamp in September 2017

I have been photographing this ephemeral swamp at Homerton for over ten years. My intention is to monitor changes after the paddock, that was previously grazed by cattle, was planted with bluegums.

At the moment is is full of water because it's been a wet winter and spring in western Victoria. This photo was taken in the summer of 2006 when it was a lot drier . I have previously blogged about changes in this swamp here.

Swamp in January 2006

The plantation is probably about due for its first harvest and then the bluegum trees will be allowed to regrow from the stumps for the next harvest in another ten years. I'm hoping that the reeds and rushes, as well as possibly trees like Blackwoods, Black Wattles and Swamp Gums, will grow around the swamp because they grow in another swamp less than 100 metres away but that's not happening yet.

Photopoint

I have photographed this ephemeral swamp regularly in the last decade. It used to be a cleared paddock, used for grazing cattle, but is now a bluegum plantation. The location is Homerton in Western Victoria.

I was interested to see whether the reeds and rushes would regenerate after the stock were removed. We have had several wet years after the decade-long drought and there appears to have been quite a bit of regrowth. And it's interesting to see that the eucalypt has recuperated as well.

January 2006

January 2007

November 2007

January 2009

October 2011

January 2014