Ephemoral Stream dreaming

A follow up on my last post which was a kind of screaming rant about the destruction of habitat loosely disguised as some kind of cryptic rant about academia...

Well they're still at it! Instead of improving road safety and building us shared bike path or cycle lane on Lee Point Road a certain Government department who for the sake of this post I am calling: The 'Suppression of Tranquility and Usurpers of Public Inclusion Department'. (STUPID) of the NT'. Have chosen to continue their assault on all living things the happen to find along the roadways.


Continuation of destruction from Yesterday.

Besides creating greater erosion and reducing habitat the removal of these trees has also removed a critical amount of shade... Of course this makes it less pleasant for humans to sit around, or ride through; but what it also does is leave the entire watercourse vulnerable to invasive weeds like Gamba and Mission Grass! These two species are highly invasive and highly flammable. Bad move STUPID! Both weeds are present in the area but had failed to colonize the shaded area in my previous post and you can now see in the image above.

There's something going on in this town and it Sucks! Like Billy Colony predicted... 'The Beige People want to taking over the world' (or something like that!)

I've ridden by that way so many times, delighting in the shade, the green the cool. A secret place functioning beautifully without interference, overlooked by the agents of the machine and loved... One more beautiful place defiled.
Without the cover of a row of trees so many Long Grass camps are exposed, vulnerable to the prying eyes of drivers and 9 to 5ers. Bush campers creeping a little further from the road trapped between the bitumen and a cyclone wire fence... Soon Old Darwin will be sterilized of all imperfections, sanitized of colour of every kind!

All around Darwin right now trees are being felled; cut down to the ground and their roots chewed out of the earth! The attack is not just on trees and greenery either... When I arrived in Darwin there were murals on all of the bus stops, Casuarina Library and a bunch of other places that may have already slipped by without being noticed. The murals are being painted over with some neutral uninspiring anti-colour!
WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO THIS TOWN?

So what's next?





Look what they're doing

Academia is the opiat of the educated!

Since I returned to School as a mature aged student I have come to learn some important lessons about the world of academia and bureaucracies. Having sat in on several significant lectures based on contemporary issues in society and to do with the environment, I am convinced that the single most important function of academia is: To take those people who actually have the intelligence to be able to articulate exactly what is wrong and are able to present believable and convincing arguments for sensible, changes that will prevent the wholesale pillaging and waste of the Earth and all that is sacred within it Locked in an endless cycle of publishing reports, presenting seminars, writing essays and basically keeping their noses out of the real world! After hanging around the University/TAFE for too many years I am completely convinced that it's all a crock of shit!
I've attended architecture and housing planning seminars full of experts and politicians giving detailed descriptions of the type of housing that is suitable for the tropics and will soon become the standard... while right down the road yet another gated estate full of concrete boxes was being constructed!
I've volunteered with scientists who were content to witness the destruction of critical habitat while they measured it's effect on the local wildlife! Important work of course that will end up at the back of a report that may or may not be glanced at by a policy maker somewhere down the track! It's all BULLSHIT!

Well here's another one for the list! And I mean no offense to the presenter of this seminar or any of his team... It's important information... but nobody is listening! And while you were collecting your data which I am sure will prove to advance what we know about stream diversity... All our streams are being filled in, concreted, poisoned or bled dry! Surely we need more activists!

Today the school for Environmental Research at Charles Darwin University hosted the following presentation:

Water, Wind, Wood and Trees: Their Role in Maintaining River Complexity in Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory

presented by

Wayne D. Erskine

According to the promotional info the presentation focused on the significance of riparian vegetation and the presence of wood (trees etc...) as a contributor to bank stability, and reducing scouring along rivers.

Abstract

"...The roughness created by dense bank-side trees is responsible for low flow velocities along the channel margins and hence the measured zero bank erosion rates.." (Wayne D. Erskine)

I have read one or two papers on this subject and there's a fair bit of evidence available that suggests maintenance of riparian vegetation is "GOOD", clearing vegetation along streams is NOT GOOD!
See:
Land and Water Australia (The Federal Gov shut them down last year!)
Rip Rap Magazine
Or if you don't mind stepping out from conventional science and reading something a bit more Out there Peter Andrews

So with all this 'knowledge' and with access to great research as I am sure Mr Erskin has provided. Why? Why do our Government Land Managers continue to ignore and contradict practical and sensible land management practices?

Why have they only this week chosen to obliterate one of Darwin's best examples of a well structured ephemoral-stream/drainage line?

Turning This (McMillans Rd Marara NT)



Into This! (a little further along McMillans Rd Marara NT)


My conclusion is that our Government Land Managers couldn't give a stuff about the Land and no one who knows better is about to stand up and tell them because Academia is a farce! So long as the right jargon is used it's business as usual and let's get some guy down there with a spirit level and a grader before the greenies try to stop us...
Gov has naught to fear from the wealth of scientific evidence they are ignoring because nobody of any significance is really looking!
Academia is a Farce! The Academic world/universe is simply the means by which otherwise useful people are distracted from taking meaningful action on issues that truly deserve their attention. Keeping the worlds greatest minds occupied with intellectual celebrity while the the greedy and ignorant rule....! Or is that a little harsh?

We only want a little shade!

(Once a shady avenue)

If you ride your bicycle along McMillans Rd in Jingli/Moil NT. Then you've probably noticed that all the lovely shade trees have been knocked down. My ride home from work has been so much hotter thanks to the DPI's new landscaping project.

OBSTRUCTION: When I asked why, I was advised that the trees obstructed peoples vision... I mistakenly thought that they were referring to road safety and other traffic but as I ride by that way every day I know that there never was any such obstruction. However with the trees there the Bottle Shop/Hotel and motel were slightly hidden from the road... Is it possible they cut down the trees so that traffic can be directed to the drive through bottle shop more easily?

The form of these trees was quite uniform, narrow trunks with a spreading canopy of leaves above (kind of like big umbrellas). I'm not saying they weren't an obstruction at all because I believe they were blocking particular things. Firstly the row of tree trunks would have acted like bollards along a busy roadway... If a car had lost control and jumped the curb it is quite likely one of those trees would have stopped it from smashing into traffic, pedestrian, cyclists or property on the other side. The other obstruction the trees caused was far more likely to affect cyclists and pedestrians... The canopies of those trees obstructed the harsh rays of the afternoon sun from frying the skin and brains of those who traveled along the bike path. If you ask anyone who uses the shared bicycle/pedestrian path they will tell you how nice it is to have some shade... They will also tell you how pissed they are now that the shade they relied on has been removed!

The signs say 'landscaping in progress', I can't wait to see the end results of what they have done to our landscape! I can only imagine, greener grass and a manicured water intensive, 'Prettification' but NO Shade!. I wonder if they'll have to declare the amount of carbon they are releasing through the chipping of those trees?

(Stumped!)

(Marked for the Axe)

Thanks for nothing DPI. Please don't call the work you are doing 'improvement'.