A prosperous sign perhaps?

I've always wondered what would happen if an actual rainforest was made in the area - what type of birds would find it attractive. As if approving of my idea I saw my first white coloured eagle/hawk/kite two days in a row that I hadn't seen in a long time circling the entire area and neighbourhood. I had planted 8 trees and shrubs (out of the 50 or so plants) at that time.

Nothing birds have so far taken an interest in the trees and shrubs that are being planted yet. I guess that is because the seedlings are shorter than the surrounding grass. When the plants start to grow maybe birds will be interested in them.

I have not started planting any trees in the actual rainforest area yet. I'm waiting to see if I can buy all the trees/shrubs/groundcovers/etc online, as seeds or plants. Whilst foraging through Carol's garden I found a climbing vine plant that I will eventually get seed from to add to the rainforest. I also found a self-sown seedling of a tree that was small enough to transplant into a pot. It will be one of the first trees I'll be adding to the rainforest. I found both the seedling and vine growing underneath gum trees in the shade.

I was actually foraging though the undergrowth of the gum trees to find a suitable fallen gum tree branch to turn into a bird feeder but my creativity levels is less than zero these days so I gave up on that idea. I'm actually going to make a bird feeder out of a pedastool fan that decided to malfunction last night. It will have a roof and everything.

I am really looking forward to the day when I can actually begin planting out the empty paddock with trees. But first I have to stabilize the creek bank areas and slowly plant trees, etc up to the rainforest area. The paddock will contain the bulk of the rainforest whilst the creek areas will build up to the rainforest plants with similiar plant species.

At the moment I am trying to find ways to create tree guards for the plants I have already planted out. I think I might start buying one litres of milk rather than the 3 litres of milk, just so I can recycle the containers as tree guards. I'm going to use bamboo or just normal sticks to hold the milk cartons in place.

Hopefully I'll have some photos to add of the revegetation project soon.

Seedlings arrived today

Last Monday my order for 40 plants went through and the plants were shipped out to me. I now need to find suitable locations for each plant. The planting of these seedlings will not yet occur for another week as they have been in a box for the passed 4 days, and probably under shade cloth before then. I need to acclimatise them to our local weather. Fortunately it is now cloudy and is raining on and off. This is good to help me dig holes in the ground to plant the trees and shrubs as the ground will be wet.

Yesterday I bought some plants from the local hardware store which I actually forgot about (that they sold plants). I mostly bought Grevilleas but I did manage to find one Eucalyptus tree amongst all their plants, and it was a Crimson Mallee. I have no idea where to plant the Crimson Mallee at this point in time. The plants I bought yesterday were all under shade cloth so I'm acclimatising them to the weather at the moment.

Tomorrow I will begin rebuilding part of the creek bank that has severely eroded away. Every time it rains heavily here the bank erodes a little bit more. The dirt is exposed now in places along one section of the slope.

I don't have any money to buy stuff to prevent the soil eroding away, like cloth or cement to make a retaining wall. So what I plan on doing is simply reshape the creek bank with a shovelfuls of sand from the creek itself and plant low shrubs outward away from the edge of the creek. As I do this I will gradually add more sand from the creek bed to backfill the slope. I'll be using the plants that I have already bought and that should stabilise the creek bank in that location of the Tenterfield Creek. I intend to rebuild the bank from the bottom upwards, slowly backfilling the bank to make it slope downward rather than suddenly drop downward like a cliff. Starting at the water's edge (if any exists by tomorrow in that spot) I'll slightly deepen the creek and put the sand up on the creek bank and hold it all together with plants and grass. I'll dig some large chunks of grass up from other parts of the property/creek and try and get the grass established as the plants grow, then I'll separate the grass once the plants are bigger to do another section of the creek.

I know this all sounds backward but in my head, in theory, it should work. Its worth a try because Carol is slowly losing her property's land due to water erosion.

The local birdlife need a rainforest to remain here

What really annoys me the most about some of the local birdlife is they come begging for food from me. I generally don't give them food but only when they are desperate do I feed them. What the birds really need in Tenterfield is an abundant supply of food. If they had more than enough food they wouldn't come begging for food from me or anyone else.

This is where my patience with birds runs a bit thin. I can't always afford to feed them every time they beg for food. I can't always give them what they want. What these begging birds need, especially the Australian Magpies and Red Wattlebird is a rainforest in their back yard. There is simply not enough nectar around for the Red Wattlebirds and other honeyeaters to feed on, nor is their enough insects around for the Australian Magpies to feast on. Insects and nectar is becoming even more scarce in Tenterfield than previous years. This is because the rain is not consistent and as a result the plants are not producing enough flowers to produce a sustainable amount of nectar. Insects are simply dieing off because there is nowhere for them to be fruitful and multiply.

It is a crying shame that Tenterfield severely lacks food plants for the birdlife. People here do not seem to be concerned about the bird population or that the birds are leaving town in large numbers. People seem content to continue mowing their lawns or grazing their domesticated animals in empty paddocks.

Tenterfield could easily become a rainforest area that is full of life rather than mostly devoid of it. The potential is there for a rainforest habitat. You only have to walk around town and look at the moss and lichen all over the place, on the ground, covering the trees, even growing on power lines and trees. The moisture exists but it is just not concentrated anywhere to create a rainforest habitat as the humidity escapes all the time. So Tenterfield dries out and the moss and lichen dry out too.

I thought it would be difficult to create a rainforest in Tenterfield but really a rainforest would actually work here. And I believe a rainforest would actually florish in town. The only thing that would ruin a rainforest here is the strong westerly and south-westerly winds we receive. If those areas can be blocked off by dense trees and shrubs a rainforest would easily thrive here.

So, what local plants could be used to block off these strong winds that Tenterfield receives? Well, one could use thick stands of Bottlebrushes; Jasmine; Melaleucas; Grevilleas; as well as plants local like this:

I don't know what it's called but the bigger
bush in the center of the picture can fill gaps.

A stand of various sized shrubs can create
a dense wind break if planted next to each other.

Look at the bush in the far left corner. Don't
know what it is but its in Bruzner Park.

A bush out front of my brother's Flat. Don't
know what it is but it is always pruned heavily.

Having a variety of different plants to use helps too as a rainforest contains lots of different plant species. They contain trees, shrubs, vines, climbing plants, ferns, palms, orchids, and lots more. Of course, there are also many different types of rainforests in Australia, but creating one with everything in it can't be that hard.

The point to all of this is by adding a variety of flora to just one small paddock can and will create the environment birds need to thrive in. Even though Australian Magpies don't actually live in rainforests these birds are adaptive and will go to where a new source of food is. If it contains more insects in the ground than anywhere else, they will go there all the time, especially if the insect population in the ground is thriving and multiplying despite it being a drought. If you create open areas on the ground where the Magpies can walk through comfortably they will enter the rainforest and forage for food. Magpies just need a bit of walking space that's all. So creating walking paths is just as good for humans as it is for Magpies, as long as the paths are natural and not made of bricks or concrete.

Partial construction of the Bangor Rainforest begins on the 16-17 November 2012

South end of the paddock with existing flora.

The Bangor Rainforest will begin on the south bank of the Tenterfield Creek and will wander up the bank into the paddock adjacent to it, on Carol's property. On the east side of the creek itself, the bank will be planted out only on the west side of the bank, unless I get permission from the other neighbour up the road. And the rainforest cannot cover the entire paddock either as there is a dam siren in the paddock. See photo below. Shorter bushes must be placed in that area so the dam siren can be maintained by those responsible for it being there. A work vehicle and the maintenance crew must have access to that paddock and immediate area around the dam siren. Vehicle access is essential. I won't be working on that area until probably next year some time, so I'll have a lot of time to think about coming up with a design for what sort of plants to grow in that area.

North end of paddock with the Dam
siren visible next to left Poplar tree.

Last Thursday, I purchased 40 seedlings online from the ERA Nursery: 15 trees and 25 shrubs. On Friday, 16 November I will finally receive those seedlings and can begin planting them out over that weekend. I've had to refine my research even further about creek bank plantings and now I know exactly where to plant these 40 seedlings.

Here is a pdf I found online that has helped me do my final research of what to plant where. Even though the plants in the pdf are of Queensland flora by simply knowing of similiar plants in the Tenterfield area really helps. I just replaced the QLD plants with NSW/Tenterfield plants. The layout for the plants is exactly the same as it is for Queensland. A creek bank is a creek bank no matter where it is in the world. Whilst waiting for the seedlings to arrive I will be creating a written design of the entire creek and rainforest area as to where to plant seedlings. Getting the scale and shape correct of the entire area is the hardest part. It is a huge area to cover.

The 40 plants that I have bought are:
10 x Eucalyptus grandis - Flooded Gums
5 x Eucalyptus sideroxylon rosea - Red Iron Bark
5 x Callistemon citrinus - Crimson Bottlebrush
5 x Callistemon sieberi - River Bottlebrush
5 x Casuarina glauca - Swamp Oak
5 x Melaleuca bracteata - River Tea Tree
5 x Melaleuca squamea - Swamp Honey Myrtle

My only real concern at the moment is a potential new flood that could happen over the next few summer periods, and an 8 foot cliff in one section of the creek. The cliff occurred from water erosion from previous floodings. Over time the cliff is becoming more of a serious threat to collapsing even though the creek banks are being held together by grass.


The video above shows the worst flood Tenterfield has received in 60 years. The entire creek and paddock were underwater during the flood. In fact, this video was the morning after the flood peaked, so this video shows the flood had dropped a bit. The entire paddock is prone to flooding, so any plants grown in the paddock must be flood proof, or at least strong enough to withstand a major flood in the future like this flood of January 2011. Fortunately when any flood happens the water recedes rather quickly in just a few days. Even more fortunate is knowing the fact floods don't occur in Tenterfield every single year. It may be 3-4 years before another flood occurs. With the increase of rains since October the chances of it flooding again this summer looks slim. So, it looks promising that the 40 plants I will be planting during the next few weeks along the creek will be big enough to withstand the next flood when it happens.

A few of the trees will have to be planted in the paddock itself, where the rainforest begins. I really want to begin on the rainforest area but only 5 of the trees will be planted on or near the paddock to prevent the trees from getting diseases from waterlogged roots. I might see if they can cope with periodic flooding just to see if they can survive, so the 5 Red Iron Bark trees will be an experiment. If I lose them, I'll just replace them with something else.

There is also a rabbit warren concern. Introduced rabbits live in the immediate area which I plan on revegetating, and I am just hoping the rabbits will not disturb the roots or plants of the seedlings I will be planting next weekend onwards. The rabbit warren takes up a very large area of one small section of the Tenterfield Creek, and of course, has 3 entrances. My neighbour's dog loves digging up the rabbit entrances to try and get the rabbits in it. But fortunately for me it is also snake season, and the dog does not enter long grass when the snakes are out and about. I have to be extremely careful when planting up some of these plants as I'll be entering a section where there could be Red-bellied Black Snakes and fully grown Eastern Water Dragon lizards. Removing the long grass and replacing it with native grasses is going to be a very slow process.

If you could see the scope of the area of not just the creek but the paddock in which I will turn into a rainforest, you would be speechless and overwhelmed by the size of it. In fact, it is not even a very big size in comparison to some of the other paddocks in Tenterfield. If you have ever been to Bruxner Park in the main street of Tenterfield, well, Bangor Rainforest is at least 3-4 times bigger. Forty trees and shrubs is simply not enough. I'd need at least 1,000 or more tree/shrub/groundcover/grasses, etc seedlings to cover the entire area. More to come next weekend.

Trying to get plum trees to take root

The plum tree runners are the tall light green
plants in the foreground in this picture.

Okay, I have to start somewhere and not everything is about getting the largest canopy trees or any trees or plants in the ground for that matter. It is about doing something to get this project started. Currently I am doing a lot of grunt work at trying to get a small handful of plum tree runners to take root. I had to cut them off the parent plant as they would've just been mowed over.

Why grow plum trees in a rain forest? Well, why not. They are very easy to contain even though they spread via runners. If you don't want anymore plum trees in the rain forest you simply break the runner plant and it will not grow back. You have to do that every year though otherwise you'll end up with a dense forest of plum trees.

The plum tree has many advantages over other deciduous trees, I reckon. Firstly it is one of the best shade trees in Summer whereby it actually cools the ground underneath the tree. In summer time it gets awfully hot here in Tenterfield. Underneath a well grown plum tree it is at least 10 degrees cooler than in the hot sun. Australian Magpies seem to appreciate the shade underneath the plum tree in Summer and actually spend a lot of time in it's shade. Secondly, it makes for a great lower canopy tree. It will grow in full sun or part shade. It may also grow in full shade. Thirdly, it produces blossom or nectar within the flowers which is eaten by honeyeaters as well as Noisy Miners which then turns into fruit which some of the larger birds eat.

The species of plum tree in my garden thrives in a frost hollow. That is important because I know it will survive much closer to the Tenterfield Creek as it does at my place.

My theory is to plant trees and shrubs in close proximity to one another, allowing for gaps in the trees so people and animals can walk, run through the area. The only exception will be the Short-leaved Fig trees which I will space out so they can grow to their full height and width. I have no real plan or design planned out for the construction of this rainforest. It is a huge area to cover with plants but I have to start somewhere.

The main idea is to get any trees or plants planted in the ground as soon as possible. Fog tends to linger around the area where I intend to grow the rain forest, so I want to maximise that effect by having the fog trapped by the flora near the creek itself. By the plants catching the fog and absorbing the moisture from the fog the entire area can only get more rain forest like with time. The fog will eventually create a more abundant and rich rainforest habitat once all the plants and trees are established, as fog occurs frequently here in Tenterfield. Even though the Bangor Rainforest will only cover a very small area, it will eventually contain, if I live long enough to see it, an abundant assortment of wildlife species.

These next few months I can only hope that the plum tree runners will survive and start growing taller. I have already lost two of them. Any that survive will be a miracle.