In central Victoria, traditional owners the Dja Dja Wurrung (also known as DJAARA - their representative body) are reasserting their right to manage Country. As part of this process, they are rolling out their interconnected land management programs of Djandak Wi (Country Fire) and Galk-galk Dhelkunya (Forest Gardening).
Parts of the Wombat Forest exist on Djaara land. Storm clearing activities in the Wombat in 2022 caused considerable alarm within the forest activist community because of a connection with the (thankfully now defunct) state logging agency VicForests.
The scale of the works caused great concern but also resulted in significant misunderstanding about the nature of Forest Gardening. In response to the controversy DJAARA have stated that:
'The removal of wind thrown timber was not Forest Gardening. To date, the only contemporary Forest Gardening application has been at one small trial site.'
‘Forest Gardening is not logging. It is healing Djandak (Dja Dja Wurrung Country) and includes cultural thinning, revegetation and cultural burning. Our knowledge represents over 65,000 years of land management experience’.
In an attempt to help forest activists to better understand Dja Dja Wurrung aspirations for Country, FoE has been helping to organise regular ‘walks on Country’ with representatives from DJAARA.
These walks are now starting to focus on providing direct support for the management of the forest, in particular removal of invasive plant species.
In November, Friends of the Earth local supporters living on Dja Dja Wurrung country joined DJAARA staff for a working bee on their 14 hectare test site in the Wombat forest.
The crew were invited to help manually weed invasive gorse in the bush, while instructed to be careful of other understorey plants and not to disturb any nesting birds.
It was great to get together on the ground, helping to decolonise the harms that European weeds continue to cause on the landscape.
We heard about the holistic approach that Dja Dja Wurrung will be taking to manage weeds throughout the landscape. This involved custodial responsibility for weed management techniques, including using manual weeding and Cultural cool burning rather than chemicals and machinery, monitoring the effect of management interventions long-term, and replacing habitat plants for small wildlife. We also observed some human made tree hollows that are being installed as habitat, which are being monitored by wildlife cameras.
We will be holding one more work trip before Christmas, and then restart them after fire season. If you would like to come along on one of the walks or fieldtrips, please contact Cam: [email protected]
For a background story on FoE’s relationship with Dja Dja Wurrung, please check here.