Meribah Nature Reserve

In 2002 I decided to put aside some 8ha of land adjacent to the west of our home at Meribah for re-establishing native flora. The site encompasses the Houlaghans Creek along with an adjoining gully. Only a handful of trees existed there at the time, namely a few long standing White Cypress pines & some Grey Box gums along the creek bank. One of these Grey Box trees is quite ancient being being evident by its many old hollows & rather large old trunk making it easily pre-European. The paddock over the years had served as home to farm rams & had been cropped on occasions. It was always one of those difficult ones to deal with also having two intersecting power lines & an underground pipeline providing our farm with town water.

Not having addressed the loss of trees over the years of farming since settlement I decided the time had come to make good & return this area to nature. This would be of great benefit not only to wild life fast disappearing & running out of places to exist but also for us being a wonderful asset to live by. I was fortunate in my endeavor to be approved funding for this project through Greening Aus & in particular the Bidgee Banks and its tributaries program. It is worth mentioning that the bioregion here is one of the most over cleared in the country.

I adopted the book Bidgee Bush compiled by Karen Walker Geoff Burrows & Lynne McMahon which is an identification guide to common native plant species of the South Western Slopes of New South Wales. The geographical area covered by this book encompasses an 80 km radius from Wagga Wagga. As I only wanted to establish native species common to here this book fitted perfectly to my aims for the reserve.

It was my intention from the onset to establish White Box Gums a protected species in this site so as to preserve the area in the future. At this time Yellow Box & Grey Box Gums also included in the planting have been put on the protected list. Recent changes to laws on land clearing will ensure the site remains intact which pleases me greatly.

So it was during August 2002 with the help of Green corps from Ganmain that the planting was undertaken. Not with standing a lot of watering due to dry years since, the initial & subsequent plantings has resulted in only minimal losses.

It is not proving easy however by any means to rid the site of the many weeds & annual grasses to allow the native ones to come back. Help from organizations like the Grassy Box Woodlands & N.P.W.S Conservation Partners are invaluable as the task at hand requires a lot of specialized information.

Further reading in these areas can be sourced from Bookmarks Truck loads of rock have been tipped into the Gully head to secure further erosion & at the same time to provide habitat for all critters great & small to call home. This is beginning to happen & it is obvious with the number of bird sightings that I have started something that is well on the way to being right.

Today everything is coming along just wonderfully & I am now planning to extend this area by opening up another section of adjoining land along the creek. What a pity I did not have the foresight to begin all of this 20 years ago

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