November 2012 field day

Members reviewing a large iron bark

The final field day for 2012 was held at Clarendon Forest Retreat: a resort of 900 acres with a mixture of accommodation, horse riding and forest.  There were 20 people present, and Craig Tate presented the work he has carried out advising the owners on how to manage the forest areas.  While in the conference centre we were shown an outline of the 900 acres using the Farm Keeper software.  One area has been proposed as a conservation area, since it has significant trees, including a large red cedar that must have been missed by the early loggers.   At the other side of the property, 10 hectares were classified as a Private Native Forest (PNF), and we walked through this area identifying the trees, how they were marked as habitat, recruitment, and those to keep, with others marked for removal to allow growth for the retained trees.  The diversity of the trees was of interest, including flooded and Sydney blue gum, tallow wood, turpentine, grey gums, iron and stringy barks, bloodwoods and a few grey boxes.  Bloodwoods are resistant to white ants but susceptible to burning in fires: something to consider when fencing.
After lunch, Ashley Cox, son of the owner, demonstrated the weedicide gas gun that he uses to reduce large infestations of lantana.