We will be holding a volunteer information day and get together for new volunteers to meet this Sunday May 23rd. All prospective volunteers, friends and family welcome. A BBQ lunch will be provided but please let us know by 8pm Wednesday May 19th if you will be coming. BYO Drinks, Plates and Cutlery and folding chairs. RSVP to friendsoftarrabulga@gmail.com or David on 0488 035 314.
A BBQ lunch will be provided but please let us know by 8pm Wednesday May 19th if you will be coming. BYO Drinks, Plates and Cutlery and folding chairs. RSVP to friendsoftarrabulga@gmail.com or David on 0488 035 314. The day will kick off at 11.30am.
For anyone that is interested, Friends of Tarra-Bulga National Park are going to hold a Bioblitz on Sunday February 14th. The day is intended to be a fun and casual way to start off our activities for the year. We will aim to use cameras to record anything of interest we find. The results can then potentially be added to Citizen Science apps such as the Tarra Bulga National Park project on iNaturalist https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/tarra-bulga-national-park . If the weather conditions are suitable, we will also run a light sheet to attract moths and other insects on the Sunday evening.
Anyone is welcome to attend, no prior experience or knowledge is necessary. The official start time is 10am at the Visitors Centre but you could potentially join in at any time on the day. Just bring along any food or drinks you need for the day as well as any cameras, phones, binoculars etc you may have lying around. For more information or to register your interest in attending you can contact 0488 035 314 or email: friendsoftarrabulga@gmail.com You can also register via ParkConnect https://bit.ly/39VtMRV
Easing of Covid-19 restrictions in Victoria has meant that our group activities have been allowed to re-commence
Tarra-Bulga National Park is one of only a handful of National Parks in the state that has an operational Visitor Information Centre. In this day and age it is refreshing for visitors that are not familiar with the Park to be able to have face to face interaction with an actual human being. This enables them to get the best information in regards to getting the most out of their visit. At present we have vacancies for new volunteers to come on board and help to keep the centre open. Full training and support will be provided. You don’t even have to know that much about the park. A list of answers for common visitor questions will be provided. Our long term volunteers love the experience that working in the Visitors Information Centre Offers. It helps of course to be surrounded by the awesomeness of Tarra-Bulga National Park. It can certainly be a relaxing and enjoyable way to spend a day. All while helping to provide a great community service. Some of our volunteers find it so enjoyable, that over the years they have accumulated over 200 days service. Do you enjoy getting out in the community, if so please consider giving volunteering at Tarra-Bulga a go. For further details or to register your interest email friendsoftarrabulga@gmail.com or phone our Volunteer Co-ordinator Jane on 5196 6182.
One of the stunning features of Tarra-Bulga National Park’s cool temperate rainforest gullies is the amazing array of mosses and liverworts. These delicate plants are often tiny and identifying them can be a significant challenge. Kara Healey was a renowned caretaker(Ranger) in the Tarra Valley in the 1950’s. She dedicated a lot of her time to collecting specimens of a wide range of lifeforms in within the park and sending them off to herbariums and other institutions to be identified and catalogued. Her efforts resulted in the Tarra Valley having one of the most comprehensive lists of its flora and fauna out of any park in the state. We have recently obtained some scans of collections she made way back in the 1950’s. It is incredible that they are so well preserved after all this time. Enjoy! and for anyone who is into studying mosses and liverworts out there – this might be a very useful resource.
To celebrate their 25th anniversary, the Friends of Tarra-Bulga National Park are planning to hold a special function at the Ship Inn in Yarram, on November the 23rd. They are hoping that as well as current volunteers getting together, former volunteers will also come along. For details about the upcoming anniversary event or if you would like to join the group and become a volunteer please contact David Akers on 0488 035 314 or email friendsoftarrabulga@gmail.com
A semi-rare event with a dump of snow on the Park overnight. Thankfully it was not too heavy. There were a few shrubs and trees around that couldn’t cope with the weight of the snow and fell over so there will be a bit of a clean up job required. On the bright side the snow adds and extra touch of beauty to an already spectacular location.
Conditions were fortunately very good after a wild week of strong winds, rain and even a dusting of snow on the Wednesday. As a result of the snow many fern fronds have been crushed down and were providing an obstacle along the walking tracks. The temperature was relatively mild and although you could hear the wind in the tree-tops it was not that strong. First Light was predicted at 6:52 am and the official sunrise time was 7:21.
We had 38 volunteers which was more the enough to cover all 16 monitoring locations. After meeting at 6.15 am everyone was briefed and out into the field by 6:40. Kookaburras were the first birds to start calling and were very active and noisy for quite a while. It seemed like quite a long wait until we heard our first Lyrebird at 6:58 am. Most volunteers had vacated their sites by around 7:15 am and people started filing into the Guest House for breakfast by about 7:25.
The results were collated this year during Google Earth. The bottom of Lyrebird Ridge seemed to be quite active as well as the points around the suspension bridge and the Bulga Carpark. other sites were much quieter with only one or two calls heard.
Using our call triangulation method there ended up being a couple of anomalies with the results that made the certainty of the existence of a couple of birds 100% certain. (e.g 2 monitoring sites heard it calling but a closer one did not). Overall though we came up with a total of 9 birds calling for 2019 (which is one more than last year).
Friends of Tarra-Bulga National Park 