The Goldfields Track guide has been reprinted – it is now a walking and cycling guide. This recognises that cyclists use it just as much as walkers. The Goldfields Track  Inc website, which is primarily visited by bike riders, now sells the reprints, as well as the Great Dividing Trail Association, primarily representing walkers. Regional info centres also sell the guide.

It is proposed to  fully revise the guide by mid 2017. New cycling and walking track routes are under development, including incorporation of the new Canadian Forest Park at Ballarat,  the heritage-rated La Gerche Track at Creswick and the Bendigo Bushland Trail.  

Victorian Community History Awards winner The People of Budj Bim is now part of the Monash University curriculum. The book is currently stocked at the Koorie Heritage Trust shop in Federation Square, the Museum Victoria bookshop and the Paperback at the top end of Collins St. Or you can buy it online  via this website.

In spring 2015, Bayside Bushwalking Club and the Great Dividing Trail Association (GDTA) hosted a weekend of 20 walks in the Daylesford region attended by over 300 walkers.


 Produced by em PRESS, this booklet provides a record of all 20 walks, complete with map, elevation profile and walk description. It acts as both a memento for those who participated and a guide if they or their friends wanted to come back to the region.

The GDTA intends to use the walks described in the booklet as the source forts 2016 walks program
 
Highlights are described for those walkers who want to try out more of the natural beauty of the high forests and the region’s mid-19th century gold rush era cultural heritage. Most walks are circuits, avoiding the irritation of car shuttles.
 
​Great Dividing Trail Association    www.gdt.org.au

Essendon Football Club’s new gym facilities  have a room named after Australia's first Indigenous Paralympian, Kevin Coombs.  The state-of-the-art facilities have  become a sports hub for Paralympians in Melbourne. Kevin played for Australia's wheelchair basketball team in five Paralympics. His inspirational story has been published by em PRESS and with the move of the Koorie Heritage Trust to Federation Square, em PRESS has acquired some excess stock of his book A Fortunate Accident – for a review click here. Visit the SHOP ONLINE to buy one of the limited number of copies we have about this sporting hero and exceptionally resilient and compassionate man.

After 14 years as Editor of the national quarterly magazine Australian Forest Grower, I intend to retire after the summer edition comes out in February. 

I am not, however, leaving AFG. As an executive member of the Ballarat branch, I look forward to taking part with other AFG members in broadening our base and reinventing the purpose of AFG to match the spirit of the times.
 
Farm foresters need to reinvent themselves as custodians of the land, dedicating their silvicultural skills towards renewing land/water/biota. That would aid landholders long term resilience, as well as that of the landscape they inhabit.

Ballarat Region Treegrowers continues with our multi-diverse, multi-layered 15ha biorich plantation in a mining buffer zone at Lal Lal, based on the principles outlined in the emPRESS book Recreating the Country. Aimed at replicating the the structure of the original natural forest to optimise biodiversity, a biorich plantation also incorporates commercial elements offering landowners resources and income – for more, check out the biorich website. 

Photographer Alison Pouliot has become something of a fungi expert. She's always back in Australia from her other home in Switzerland for our fungi season in late autumn, running a series of workshops on the magic of fungi. 

This May she and I signed some of the remaining Limited edition copies of Gariwerd: Reflecting on the Grampians, which artfully present  her outstanding lyrical photos in large scale landscape format. Limited edition images are picked out in spot varnish and printed on the highest quality A1 paper possible. Only 500 were ever printed.
  
The photos were taken in the years just prior to the first big bushfire in the Grampians ranges in summer 2007. You won't see their like again, especially since the northern Grampians were ravaged by fire this summer. The signed copies were specially prepared for sale at the Clunes book fair – a few are left and you can buy these online in the em PRESS store for a 40% discount.

Starting this autumn in May, naturalist and author of Daylesford Nature Diary, Tanya Loos, and nature educator Jen Bray  are leading a series of family-oriented short walks. Family Nature Walks will centre on the seasonal happenings of flora and fauna in a number of special places in the Wombat Forest. BYO drinks, snacks, weather protective gear and wear sturdy shoes. Suitable for families with primary-aged children and older. Saturdays at 2pm.

For the program of walks and to book, visit the Nature Walks page on the Daylesford Nature Diary website – click here

Andrew Green, the owner of the quirky Book Barn down by Lake Daylesford, manages one of my best retail outlets. He is very supportive of books by local authors.

You can not only browse his extensive range of rare and unusual second hand books, but have a coffee, wine or light lunch. On a fine day, you can sit on his deck overlooking the lake's tranquil waters and watch the ducks paddling around. I'm helping him set up a Weebly drag and drop website (like this one) at www.bookbarndaylesford.com

Last week, I went to Yirrkala in north east Arnhem Land to interview Indigenous Yolngu rangers  for a series of profiles on the role they are playing in successfully managing their country.  I am producing a 32 page booklet for an Aboriginal land management group  called the Yirralka Rangers, who protect and care for a vast    area of over 17,320 square kilometres containing some 20 homeland communities.   The booklet will highlight how this decentralised ranger model is not only an effective model of land management, but also has opened pathways for Indigenous landowners to create meaningful employment and business opportunities for their people, as well as to enter partnerships with government departments and private organisations.  

After six years of negotiations, Yolngu traditional owners agreed in 2006 to the first stage of incorporating a parcel of their high conservation and culturally significant land into Australia’s national reserve system as an Indigenous Protected Area (IPA).  Similar to other park rangers, the Yirralka Rangers plan and implement conservation actions, but their activities also provide significant added benefits to the Yolngu people. 

Since inception, the Yirralka Rangers have focused on the ‘two toolbox’ bicultural approach providing rangers with the western skills and science needed to augment traditional knowledge in the face of new invasive threats from buffaloes, pigs and weeds through to climate change. Education and training is seen as integral to Yolngu people remaining on country, achieving self-sufficiency and self-determination, as well as building healthy and safe communities. 

Activities undertaken by the Yirralka Rangers within the IPA include maintaining and enhancing biodiversity on land and at sea, protecting cultural sites, developing alternative sources of income and building Yolngu people’s skills and capacity. While delivering clear environmental benefits, the role of the Yirralka Rangers goes beyond the physical to the nurturing of spiritual components, so essential to a Yolngu person’s relationship with their land.

Yolngu people can see the sense in ranger work in both keeping country and in keeping them on country. With its emphasis on lifting the education and training capacity of homeland residents, ranger work provides both a role model and a career path in a region where economic independence remains elusive.