In August, I travelled to Bogor in Java for the launch of a farm forestry book documenting the results of ten years of research by a team of 30 Australian and Indonesian researchers led by Digby Race. Digby commissioned me to co-edit and publish the book Adding Value to the Farmers' Trees, which was sponsored by the Australian Centre for Agricultural Research (ACIAR)  based in Jakarta.

Adaptation of Rowan Reid's Australian Master TreeGrower program to suit Indonesian small holder farmers played a central part in the research project. The project's aims were to increase the silvicultural skills of smallholders (i.e. with farms less than 4ha in size) and to better connect them to local markets for their timber. Not that dissimilar from farm forestry extension projects which once existed in Australia.

Half of ACIAR's $9.4 million annual budget is focused on forestry research in Asia, investigating the sustainable use of forests – not just for reafforestation, but as ACIAR's Forestry Research Program Manager, Tony Bartlett, said at the launch, "so as it makes a difference to people's lives." 

After the launch, Digby, Rowan and I flew to Sulawesi with a  group of Indonesian forestry researchers  and visited a boat building village at Bulukumba, which has long lasting ties and resonance with the Yolngu people of NE Arnhem Land. Traditional Indonesian phinisi boats have been constructed at Bulukumba to the same template for almost 1,000 years. For much of that time, Macassan sailors from Sulawesi sailed east on the monsoon winds to moor off beaches in NE Arnhem Land to collect trepang or sea cucumber and peaceably trade with the Yolngu people. Their annual visits were banned by the new Commonwealth Government at Federation at the turn of the 20th century.

Beautiful, handcrafted wooden boats, the phinisi boats are now highly valued worldwide for the tourist trade. And they still ply the cargo routes between the Archipelago's thousands of islands. The ACIAR forestry research project is linking smallholder farmers to the boatbuilders of Bulukumba, so that the right sort of trees continue to be grown and can be sourced locally.  

Click on the gallery of pix below to open and see captions.
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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