The Bogong High Plains and Melbourne Botany School

by David W. Goodall

School of Natural Sciences

Edith Cowan University

d.goodall@ecu.edu.au

Working party, January 1949, in the the Scout Hut, Bogong High Plains.

From left to right: Dorothy Elwood, Iona MacLennan, David Weeks, Trevor Clifford, Margaret Stones, Bertha Barnardiston, Jim Willis, Kingsley Rowan [photograph courtesy of Iona Christianson (nee MacLennan)]

  During the Second World War, the State Electricity Commission (SEC) in Victoria was developing plans for hydroelectric power, including dams in the mountain region.  One site was at Kiewa, and the planners were concerned with the possibility of siltation there from the catchments. For many decades, these catchments had been grazed during the summer by cattle brought up from lower elevations; it was feared that this summer grazing might be increasing erosion, and hence the risk of siltation. Accordingly, in 1944 the SEC supported a decision by the Soil Conservation Board (SCB) to appoint an ecologist, Maisie Fawcett, to study the effects of grazing on the alpine vegetation. 

She set up her base in Omeo, and at the beginning of 1945 she recruited a team of four girls to help her (most of the young men were away on active service, or recovering from it). These girls (two of whom – Jean Mathieson, now Mayo, and Valerie Hartung, now Judges – are still alive) travelled up to the high alpine regions with a team of pack-horses, to record the vegetation in areas exposed to cattle grazing as compared with areas protected from it. They marked plots for comparison, and recorded the vegetation in them.

Professor John Turner of the Melbourne Botany School, though primarily a plant physiologist, had also a strong interest in plant ecology. He had been instrumental in the early stages of Maisie Fawcett’s work; when she and her team returned to Melbourne and reported what they had been doing, he was keen to help organize annual expeditions to make repeated observations on fixed plots. Each year thereafter, parties of ten or twelve (staff members, graduate students and others) departed for the mountains, travelling from Wangaratta in four-wheel-drive vehicles, to spend a couple of weeks in fairly intensive field work.   

Luckily, the Boy Scouts Association had already been active in the area, and had built a hut for overnight accommodation; the organization readily made this facility available to the Botany School. So participants were not reduced to camping, or to travelling up to the Plains from Omeo every day. In fact, participation was generally looked on as rather a holiday – if a working holiday! And botanists who would not have regarded themselves as ecologists were happy to be involved. No persuasion was needed! Even non-botanists took part – notably Margaret Stones, who later became well known as a botanical artist, and the virologist MacFarlane Burnett, who was a keen water-colorist. Overall, the annual expedition came to be regarded by the Botany School as a sort of collective School holiday, and this gave it value quite apart from the actual ecological observations. 

The wide range of participants brought multiple benefits. For instance, when I joined the team (from 1949 onwards), I was able to contribute my background knowledge of statistical applications in agriculture and psychology.

The prime purpose of the enterprise remained the documentation of changes in the vegetation of the Plains as a result of the introduction of cattle, and the process of recovery if they were excluded. A critical innovation in the work was the use of point quadrats to make the measurement of vegetation change more objective.

A scientific report, with the results of the early period of the project, is in two papers by Carr and Turner (1959a,1959b), and a historical account of its origins has been published by Gillbank (1993).

In the light of the results obtained, it was decided that grazing should be greatly reduced, and that the most effective, or politically expedient, way of doing so was to limit the length of the summer grazing season permitted. But this decision was but a part – perhaps only a small part – of the results achieved. Ecological work continued fruitfully on the High Plains thereafter, with many resulting publications; and the effects of the program in increasing ecological interest and understanding in all participants were incalculable. It influenced both the development of statistical methods in plant ecology and the establishment of a scientific base for conservation programs. It also helped John Turner in his role as chairman of the Australian Academy of Science committee which lobbied successfully for the establishment of the Kosciusko National Park. 

Bibliography

 Carr, S.G.M. & Turner, J.S. 1959a   The ecology of the Bogong High Plains.I. The environmental factors and the grassland communities.  Aust. J. Bot. 7: 12-33

Carr, S.G.M. & Turner, J.S. 1959b   The ecology of the Bogong High Plains.II. Fencing experiments in grassland.  Aust. J. Bot. 7: 34-63

Gillbank, L. 1993.  Into the land of the mountain cattlemen.   Maisie Fawcett’s ecological investigations on the Bogong High Plains.  In: Kelly, F. (Editor) On the edge of discovery. Australian women in science.  Text Publ.Co, Melbourne. Pp. 133-154.