Hooded Plover Workshop

You are invited to a Hooded Plover Workshop coming up on Saturday15th October at the Venus Bay Surf Life Saving Club. Join us to find out more about these quirky,  but vulnerable little birds that live on Venus Bay beach and other beaches in Cape Liptrap Coastal Park. The event is part of our Coastcare Victoria Community Grant project to protect Hooded Plovers within Cape Liptrap Coastal Park in partnership with Birds Australia and Parks Victoria
Saturday 15th October
Venus Bay Surf Life Saving Club
Start from 9.30am with opportunity to participate in half or whole day program finishing around 3pm
Morning session presenters:  Tanya Pyk from Birds Australia and Jonathon Stevenson from Parks Victoria 

Morning Tea and Lunch provided but BYO special dietary requirements.
Please RSVP to Tanya Pyk t.pyk@birdsaustralia.com.au or ph:03 9347 0757

Two Generations of Erosion

At many location along the Venus Bay beaches, you can see two generations of erosion on the one dune face. The upper erosion scarp (a geological term for the small vertical face, escarpment, created when waves washed away some sand)  has itself been partly eroded. As the sand face dries out it becomes unstable and collapses along wind picks up other dry sand and piles it infront of the face. Re-grown of saltbush grasses help stabile the sand collecting infron of the dune. Eventually the scarp itself will dissapear and the dune just have a steep front face. The recent erosion can be seen at the base as a new vertical face, with a areas where blocks of unstable sand have already tumbled from the sand faces above.

REMEMBER: These sand faces are remain very unstable, even if they sometimes look dry and stable.Even just a single square meter of wet sand will weigh close to 2 tonnes enough to fatally bury an adult. So children (even grown up ones) must be discouraged from playing on such erosion scarps

Still Eroding

 

Having been away for a couple of what I have come to know as the most active erosion months (August and September, presumably because of the strong swells and storms are common in these months). I was surprised that maybe there had not been as much erosion as I was expecting. Still quiet a lot of the beach shows an erosion scarp of 1 to 2m. I was also surprised to see so much seaweed on the beach (perhaps the swells have also disturbed the kelp forest off shore).

This location (just south of the beach one ramp) also shows clearly something I had noted before. The fenced “rehabilitation” area, has mainly coastal spinifex, where as the eroded area to the south is dominated by marram grass. Perhaps the flatter slope angle of the dunes with coastal spinifex lets the occasional high waves run up their surface rather than starting an erosion notch.

Bigger swells and more dune erosion

I was keen to have a look at the beach and see how the big swells of last week, affected the beach. Swells bought to our coast by really big storms and heavy weather in the southern oceans. The surfers where disappointed because the winds where not off shore, to lift the waves, but the strong on-shore winds made matters worse for erosion, that push the water up against the coast even more and clearly helped the swells and waves they produced reached right up to the dunes. Even though we not quiet to the full month.

The result is a lot of new erosion, not everywhere but obvious all along the beach.

Great farm workers!

Bats of Corner Inlet

Guest Speaker: Jim Reside, Wildlife Unlimited

Jim has been working with native fauna for more than 30 years and is an expert in the ecology of many native animals including bats

Bats: 

• eat half their body weight in insects every day
• represent 45% of mammal species in the region
• yet they are unknown to most of us:
• they are small
• they are active at night and hidden in roosts during the day
• we cannot hear them

Come and learn about these great and largely unknown little farm workers!

Wednesday 8^thJune 2011
6.30pm to 9.00 pm

Alberton West Recreation Reserve Club Rooms
North end of Lanes Road, Alberton West on the west side
Lanes Rd runs between South Gippsland Highway & Tap Tap Rd. Vic Roads ref - Page 104 C3

Please register by 5^th June.
Contact to register and for more information?bronwynt@wgcma.vic.gov.au
jimr@wgcma.vic.gov.au