Morning tea in a beautiful location. Photo by Lisa Calder.
It was a small but committed team of 6 Reefcare members and our Supervisor Kathy who headed down to our site at Long Reef Point with great weather and a cool but rather strong breeze on the headland. As usual, we got distracted by many weeds beside the path down to our site, (not our responsibility, but a concern as these weeds end up on our site as our problem).
Brad continued removing Bitou heading westward whilst Merrilyn and Des scouted the site for never-ending emergence of weeds. This season burr medic and bromus are prevalent, but they were also finding a lot of Asparagus fern which they believe is coming from further up the slope out of our area of responsibility. These have been there many years and just getting larger and larger and left to seed. To this problem, Julie as this month, like last, focused on coring Asparagus on the top areas along the fence (the line between Council responsibility and Reefcare responsibility) – and focused on Asparagus Fern again digging into clumps of Lomandra and dense grass. Coring out the Asparagus crowns in the open areas is straightforward unless they are a wide spreading crown. The photo shows the hassle when the Asparagus is growing through or close to the chain mesh fence. Cutting under the crown gets caught in the wire- so it is thought that a sharp mattock for better leverage would be better.
Removing asparagus fern rhizomes when it is enmeshed in a wire fence is challenging! Photo by Julie Whitfield.
Kathy and Lisa worked on the flat area on Turkey Rhubarb whilst Kristie worked in the area we call ‘The Nest’.
At morning tea the group discussed the Work Plan for the next 12 months which needs to be submitted to NB Council. After morning tea, Lisa walked around the site with Kathie our Supervisor to complete information for the Work Plan, then Kathie worked in the NW area with Brad, whist Lisa and Kristie focused on Burr Medic in the eastern dune area.
This is a Maroubra woodland snail. The first living specimen seen on the North side of Sydney Harbour. It was found at Long Reef and is currently living the good life at Brad’s place.