The 2022 AGM is scheduled for Tuesday 22nd November
Brookfield Showgrounds Hall
Doors open 6.30pm for 7pm start
Guest Speaker – to be announced
by mccgadmin
The 2022 AGM is scheduled for Tuesday 22nd November
Brookfield Showgrounds Hall
Doors open 6.30pm for 7pm start
Guest Speaker – to be announced
by mccgadmin
The 24th MCCG Photo Competition was another big success! 82 photos for the open categories were submitted by 22 photographers and 22 photos for the digital Young Persons (grade 1 – 6) category were submitted by 14 young photographers. This year’s judge, Martin Riley (president of the Queensland Camera Group) certainly had his work cut out for him!
The public voting was very popular with 439 People’s Choice (Open) votes tallied up over the 6 days of the display at Kenmore Village and a massive 679 votes (likes) were tallied up over the 5 days (Mon to Fri) on our social media sites to determine the Young Persons People’s Choice winner.
And the winners for 2022 are …
Elizabeth Handley (president of KBC) presenting the photo to Howard’s sister-in-law, Penny Siemon
(presented this year by Cr Greg Adermann)
by mccgadmin
Wonderful Waterways
There’s more than meets the eye in our creeks. In the Moggill Creek Catchment, there are at least 20 species of native fish and countless more macroinvertebrate species, a.k.a. water bugs. A specialist group called the Creek Health Monitoring Project (CHMP), part of the Moggill Creek Catchment Group, have been monitoring local waterways since 2011. Results from water quality testing, macro-invertebrate and fish surveys indicate a remarkably resilient ecosystem. This can be highlighted by consistent findings of sensitive water bugs like caddis fly nymph which sensationally hollow out sticks to create an impressively camouflaged home. Sensitive water bugs like the caddis fly would not be able to exist in polluted waterways so their presence is an indicator of good waterway health.
During a CHMP event, trained team leaders oversee native fish surveys, where it is common to gaze the magnificent colour of Crimson Spotted Rainbow or Pacific Blue Eye up close. Surveys from the previous two years have recorded 602 fish with 317 of these being native species and 285 being exotic species.
Despite the relative health of our local creeks, there are many risks and things we can avoid to help native fish and water bugs thrive. Car washing should be done in such a way that the water, which could contain harmful chemicals from the washing liquid and oil, doesn’t run off to the drain and into the creek. Another thing to resist is releasing any fish into waterways. Any fish released, native or not, could be carrying harmful diseases that will disrupt and threaten the balance of the creek.
The CHMP team will hold surveys again in November 2022. Follow MCCG on Facebook or email [email protected] subject ‘add to mail list’ to stay up to date or get involved in waterway health monitoring.
Lewis Peach
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Can you identify these fish of Moggill Creek using the MCCG Digital Field Guides?
Which of them is not an Australian native?
1.
2.
3.
ANSWERS:
The Tilapia is native to Africa. They are aggressive fish and tend to out-compete the natives, but they are excellent eating!
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Unfortunately Kristy Stevenson is unwell and unable to present tonight on Myrtle Rust but the talk will be rescheduled to a later date. In place of Kristy, MCCG’s Gordon Grigg will be presenting.
Evening Talk with Gordon Grigg
TONIGHT – Tuesday 27th September, 6.30 for 7pm (finish 9pm)
Brookfield Hall
TALK TITLE: “Recent work confirms that dinosaurs were warm-blooded, and presents strong evidence that most of the ancestors of today’s birds and mammals were too, sharing a 300 million year ancestry.”
Gordon will talk about the work he did on echidnas in the 1980s in the Mt Kosciuszko area in winter led ultimately to a paper earlier this year in Biological Reviews proposing that not only were dinosaurs warm blooded, so were many of their ancestors, and also the ancestors of today’s mammals, right back to the Late Permian. The data also imply that warm-bloodedness in birds and mammals has common ancestry.
Refreshments of course will be provided – we look forward to welcoming our members and guests for what will be a very interesting talk.
Photo: Dave Edwards
by mccgadmin
The Spring Newsletter is another fabulous read. Grab yourself a cuppa and enjoy the latest MCCG offering.
With thanks to our newsletter editor Cathi Lawrence and all the contributors for your efforts in continuing to make the quarterly newsletter interesting and informative.
Photo credits: Ed Frazer, Bryan Hacker, Tracey Read (check out the newsletter to find out more!)
by mccgadmin
The main feature of the Moggill Creek Catchment is the creek system that formed the area. It is dominated by Moggill Creek, which combines the flows from Gold Creek and its Reservoir and a few smaller mainly ephemeral tributaries.
Where Moggill Creek joins the Brisbane River, as it flows through Casuarina Park, it is tidal and the water has varying levels of brackishness depending on the creek flows and the salinity of the water being pushed back from the river with the twice daily tides. Here there is practically no aquatic vegetation and the banks of the creek are heavily eroded and the water is constantly turbid. The local Catchment Group is assisting in stabilising the banks with appropriate trees and plantings of Lomandra.
There are many fish that can be easily seen in this part of the creek dominated by Mullet and Fork-tailed Catfish. The Mullet feed on the surface scum which contains pollen and a few micro-organisms on which they feed. The catfish are scavengers and eat both plant and animal scraps washed down the creek. Because of the lack of suitable habitat there are few small species, but shoals of the young of several salt-water and brackish species are often present.
As you go further up the creek as it winds through the urban area and around the Kenmore High School the tidal affect is lost and the habitat improves with several native and exotic aquatic plants present. The bottom of the creek is stony, and snags and a lot of decayed vegetative matter (mulm) is present which provides an excellent habitat containing food and a suitable spawning medium for a few species. Here Platypus can be seen and the range of fish species is much larger.
The main feature of the Moggill Creek Catchment is the creek system that formed the area. It is dominated by Moggill Creek, which combines the flows from Gold Creek and its Reservoir and a few smaller mainly ephemeral tributaries.
Where Moggill Creek joins the Brisbane River, as it flows through Casuarina Park, it is tidal and the water has varying levels of brackishness depending on the creek flows and the salinity of the water being pushed back from the river with the twice daily tides. Here there is practically no aquatic vegetation and the banks of the creek are heavily eroded and the water is constantly turbid. The local Catchment Group is assisting in stabilising the banks with appropriate trees and plantings of Lomandra.
There are many fish that can be easily seen in this part of the creek dominated by Mullet and Fork-tailed Catfish. The Mullet feed on the surface scum which contains pollen and a few micro-organisms on which they feed. The catfish are scavengers and eat both plant and animal scraps washed down the creek. Because of the lack of suitable habitat there are few small species, but shoals of the young of several salt-water and brackish species are often present.
As you go further up the creek as it winds through the urban area and around the Kenmore High School the tidal affect is lost and the habitat improves with several native and exotic aquatic plants present. The bottom of the creek is stony, and snags and a lot of decayed vegetative matter (mulm) is present which provides an excellent habitat containing food and a suitable spawning medium for a few species. Here Platypus can be seen and the range of fish species is much larger.
The largest species is the Fresh-water Eel, which grows to 1.5 metres. These eels are somewhat territorial and will go overland in damp weather to find a new territory in farm dams where they live quite well. We have had them arrive in our nursery ponds and in past years our production manager caught them and produced jellied eel, which was a delicacy in his youth in England.
We used to see schools of around 12 Mullet in the big ponds alongside our property on Adavale St. 30 years ago but haven’t seen them recently. They were quite big fish and I am not sure if they were Fresh-water Mullet or Sea-mullet which venture into freshwater.
Another common fish in this reach of Moggill creek is the Eel-tailed Catfish, which grows to 80cm and weigh 8kg although I have never seen one that size in Gold Creek. While not a schooling fish, a large number can be attracted with bread or a suitable fish food and they will come to the surface in a feeding frenzy. They mainly feed at dusk and through the night aided by their sensitive long whiskers. They have a spectacular breeding method involving building a circular nest up to 2 metres in diameter where they expose and clean the stones on the bottom of the creek. Here they lay about 1000eggs which the male fans for 7 days until they hatch. Eel-tailed catfish are white fleshed and reported to be excellent eating, but my only experience of eating them was when my then 8-year-old son came home with a Huckleberry Finn style string of catfish he had caught and insisted I cook them. They were inedible as the flesh had a strong muddy overtone.
One day he also came home with a huge Silver Perch. I forget the actual weight, but it was certainly snapper sized. We later found out from Brian Leahy that several Silver Perch fingerlings were released in the Gold Creek Dam and this one was obviously washed over the spillway. We kept it alive in one of our troughs and later released it. Silver Perch, while a native fish, breed only after a substantial flood and need conditions that would not be replicated in our catchment. I recently saw another smaller Silver Perch when feeding the catfish. It was probably washed out from a farm dam as the species is a popular one for stocking farm dams.
As you go further up Moggill Creek to the junction with Gold Creek, the aquatic vegetation increases and provides a habitat suitable for many smaller fish species. While much of this vegetation is exotic it never-the-less supports a substantial population. Unfortunately, most native aquatic plants cannot tolerate elevated phosphorus levels, which are a feature of settled areas and while our creeks are some of the most pristine in Brisbane, the creek picks up enough phosphorus from septic systems and horse manure to reduce its suitability for the few native aquatic plant species, such as Myriophyllum species and Limnophilla indica, that provide excellent habitat for the breeding of many native fish species.
Some of the best suited species in this part of the creek come from the Gudgeon family. These are mainly about 4-5cm fish that breed by laying eggs on stones or submerged wood. They are attended constantly for the short time they take to hatch. In good conditions they can breed several times a year. They stay around the edges of the creeks often hiding in the vegetation darting out to catch any small prey as it passes by.
Another group in this reach of the creeks are the Ornate Rainbowfish (5cm) and their allied Australian Blue-eyes. The Rainbowfish is a prized aquarium fish that has all the colours of the rainbow in tiny reflective scales. It is a mainly mid-water to surface dwelling fish that feeds on micro-organisms and algae which are scraped off the plants and stones. They are unusual in their breeding as they lay just a few eggs a time over several days so there are always fry of different ages present. They deposit sticky eggs among fine leaves of aquatic plants or on the fine roots of trees such as weeping willows, which grow prolifically on the edges of creeks. The Blue-eyes (3cm) are noted for their brilliant eyes and yellow flag-like dorsal fins. They used to be common in the creek and 40 years ago my son and I used to take our punt on the creek at night and could net them out with a small hand net as they “slept” near the surface.
A common smaller fish along this part of the creeks that has prospered from the increased fertility is the Australian Smelt (7.5cm). It is an elongated schooling fish that is fast growing and it matures in 12 months. It scatters eggs on the stony floor of the creek and they take 10 days to hatch.
While Moggill Creek peters out to a small headwater in Upper Brookfield Valley, Gold Creek starts from the Gold Creek Reservoir. Here the water conditions are different; static water, which is pretty much pristine without the elevated phosphorus levels of the creeks below. These conditions are excellent for Gudgeons and several other small natives, but the overall fertility is much lower than the lower reaches of the creek. The dam does provide a reservoir of fish that is important for repopulating the creeks after prolonged drought where the creeks have practically dried out. Under flood condition some fish, fry or eggs are washed out of the dam and because all the creeks are interconnected in flood times, the fish can work around the edges of the flood water and repopulate depleted areas.
It is during times of flooding that the fish also swim up the edges of the water to populate farm dams. For those who haven’t been fortunate to have their dams populated naturally by this method, direct stocking with Firetail and Empire Gudgeons and Rainbows will keep the dams free of mosquitos and midges. It is best to avoid stocking with Spangled Perch (20cm) as they are very aggressive and eat all the smaller species. They also breed exceptionally rapidly, which leads to overstocking with a lot of stunted fish.
The best way to help maintain our beautiful watercourses is to ensure the margins of the creeks are well planted with trees that will shade the water. This will reduce the weed growth and ensure that mats of algae do not form because of the phosphorus levels plus the extra light. If horses and other livestock are kept, leave a substantial margin to the creek planted with shrubs and herbage that will take up the fertility from the horse manure before it gets washed into the creek.
We have a wonderful asset with our waterways which support an amazing amount of interesting wildlife from insects, frogs, birds and mammals. The efforts of the property owners and the work of the MCCG restoration groups are vital in keeping it this way.
With thanks to Ed Frazer for another excellent Bush Bites.
by mccgadmin
Myrtle Rust ‘A Growing Problem’ by Kristy Stevenson
27 September 2022 (6:30pm, for 7:pm start)
Brookfield Hall
Refreshments provided
Plants from the Myrtaceae family are iconic in the Australian native environment, with gum trees, lilly pillys, tea trees, and paper barks well loved by gardeners and bushwalkers alike. However, over the last few years, you may have noticed a new disease on one of your favourite Myrtaceae plants, the orange/ yellow spores of myrtle rust (Austropuccinia psidii). This short talk with provide some background on the pathogen, it’s history in Australia and impacts so far, in addition to some early results from research undertaken as part of my PhD studies in a wet sclerophyll forest that has experienced high levels of tree mortality due to myrtle rust.
Kristy Stevenson, The University of Queensland
Background:
Kristy is a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, her research interests are in disturbance and restoration ecology in native forest systems. She completed her undergraduate studies in agricultural science at the University of Tasmania.
by mccgadmin
How well do you know the local wildlife? You are invited to meet the Wildlife Identification Challenge!
CAN you identify these native animals using the Digital Field Guides?
Which of them is the only living member of the genus Wallabia?
1.photo: Ed Frazer
photo: Ed Frazer
Answers
The Swamp Wallaby is the only living member of the genus Wallabia.
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The Collared Delma (Delma torquata) is a small legless lizard with a distinctive glossy black head with orange-yellow stripes. It is classified as vulnerable under the Queensland Nature Conservation Act, making it a threatened species at risk of extinction. Though found in scattered populations across Southeast Queensland, its stronghold is in our western suburbs.
The local Pullen Pullen Catchment Group was recently successful in getting a highly competitive Australian Government grant to improve the habitat of the Collared Delma in the western suburbs. They will work on improving habitat for local populations, undertake surveys and educate the community.
You can help to support the recovery of this species by maintaining healthy habitat. Manage weeds like creeping lantana, avoid using herbicides, leave rocks and logs in place and restore native understorey, and keep domestic cats contained and away from native wildlife. These actions will also have benefits for other local wildlife.
Note that National Threatened Species Day is commemorated on 7 September, the day that the last Thylacine died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936. It is a day on which we should reflect on our poor extinction record and the many species that remain at risk of extinction unless action is taken. But it is also a time to raise awareness and celebrate those that work tirelessly to preserve and recover our threatened species. I salute the passionate people, like those in the Pullen Pullen and Moggill Creek Catchment Groups, who are contributing positively to threatened species recovery in Queensland.
Words and photo by Manda Page
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