The Mitchell River delta and its silt jetties, is one of the world’s most
significant ‘finger’ deltas and 6,000 to 10,000 years old.
Download this useful brochure and before going to visit the Silt Jetties
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In 2015 FOGL joined members of Rotamah Island Bird Observatory Inc for a working bee at the old bird observatory homestead. Several members arrived on Friday afternoon and others throughout Saturday.
FOGL worked in 2016 with other Community groups on plans to further rehabilitation works begun by EGSC and EG Water on McGees Gully in Bairnsdale. McGees Gully has an interesting history and McGees Gully Creek is an important waterway which runs from town into McLeods Morass.
The project, if approved and funded, would have included a Shared Path and new signage highlighting the history of McGees Gully and the native flora and fauna found in the area, providing East Gippsland residents and visitors with a very interesting path along McGees Gully down to the Morass.
FOGL representatives Anne Schmidli and Bill Cotter met with Frank McShane from EG Water, Anthony Nelson from EGSC and Bill Gamble from Mitchell River Rotary at the EG Water pumping station to discuss progress on the plans.
UPDATE 2023 : it appears some of this never happened. Why ?
FOGL members gathered in 2016 at the Silt Jetties to hear from Parks Victoria’s Sean Phillipson, Manager for Regional Delivery, about plans to protect and rehabilitate this special part of the Gippsland Lakes.
As a stakeholder having had major projects along the Silt Jetties for ten years, FOGL was involved in workshops regarding their future and had input into the development of the current plans, so we were keen to hear how they are being implemented.
Sean showed us maps and gave an extremely interesting talk explaining the background to concerns about instabilities of the Silt Jetties
A FoGL working bee on the north arm of silt jetties in 2016 for plant maintenance and rubbish collection. Good weather and comaraderie made for a great morning.
This is such a beautiful and peaceful part of the Gippsland Lakes – a wonderful place in which to spend several hours working.
FoGL volunteers collected several very large bags of rubbish including wads of fishing line, bait boxes, drink cans and bottles, food wrappers and a lot of toilet paper. Some disgusting piles of fresh human waste with toilet paper piled on top were discovered.
When we finished the area was almost pristine and the plantings look cared for.
It appears to FOGL that under the current regime we are destroying critical habitat and putting our precious biodiversity at risk under the misguided and unfounded assumption that doing so will protect private property, when overwhelmingly the scientific evidence indicates burning the bush will NOT achieve this protection. This seems seriously flawed and will lead to increased environmental degradation…
This review in 2015 covered the existing literature, both from published sources and from unpublished consultants’ reports, on the form and evolution of the Gippsland Lakes, the variety of vegetation that fringes the Lakes’ shorelines, and the way both have changed since European colonization of the Gippsland region. The next step in the first stage of the broader study, Fringing vegetation and its geomorphological importance for the Gippsland Lakes shoreline, is to undertake a detailed survey of different parts of the shoreline in order to:
- Describe shoreline geomorphology at a wide range of sites around the Gippsland Lakes
- Characterize the fringing (water-dependent) vegetation at these sites
- Assess the ecological value of this vegetation
- Account, where possible, for any changes in shorelines or in vegetation since European colonization
- Determine any relationship between lake or river-water salinity and shoreline geomorphology and fringing vegetation
- Determine whether a freshwater subsidy is responsible for fringing vegetation occurring along the more saline shorelines, from which it would be otherwise be excluded by high salinity
- Determine whether Common Reed collected from saline sites is more salt-tolerant than plants collected from fresher sites.
The second stage, Genetic identification of salt-tolerant strains of Phragmites australis (Common Reed) for use in revegetation projects around the Gippsland Lakes, will determine whether there is a genetic basis to any difference in the salt-tolerance of different strains of Common Reed and the extent to which clones from different sites are genetically related.
The two studies, taken together, are used to provide more detailed advice on possible revegetation strategies for the shoreline of the Gippsland Lakes and the lower parts of the rivers that flow into it.