I AM sure most Millgrove residents are as confused as I am about the content of your article Memorial Salute to Servicemen (Mail, 6 February).
When Bill Stratford, an old time resident alerted me to the Millgrove Avenue of Honour in the 1990s, I undertook extensive newspaper and Country Roads Board (VicRoads) correspondence research to locate the history of the Avenue.
I successfully listed the Avenue in the Shire of Yarra Ranges Heritage Study and consequently the overlay.
The Avenue of trees was listed as having high priority conservation status with the consultants recommending the care of trees to ensure their longevity.
If any trees are lost as a result of natural decline or disaster they are to be replaced, stated the consultants.
This all occurred way back in 2000. However, it wasn’t until Margaret Thompson, a committee member of the Millgrove Residents Action Group took the Avenue under her wing that we now have the trees looking so healthy and foremost in the minds of the locals.
The Shire of Yarra Ranges paid for the trees to be pruned and injected with life-saving medication. MRAG’s involvement in the Avenue’s preservation continues.
The replanting of lost trees will be undertaken soon to recognise Mrs Platt’s original idea to plant an Avenue in 1918 for the 25 local Millgrove boys who served in World War I. It is expected to dedicate the replanting to the families of the fallen soldiers.
Elena Biggs
Millgrove
Spot the leopard
ME, ME, me, me, me, me, and me again! The mantra of a minority of drivers using Nyora Road, and other pre-historic tracks.
Never mind about the state of these 19th century travel ways in the 21st century; just accelerate as if you have a Formula One racing car, and brake just as suddenly, especially on the corners. Get all wheels bouncing and hopping and dust flying. What a hoot!
Need I say that this minority renders the roads into a corrugated mess about two weeks after the roads have been graded?
Never mind compensating for the dry and loose conditions, and less than adequate maintenance of the roads’ surface.
Never mind the dust that followers of you have to choke on or the residents of properties along the road whose water tanks need filter changes regularly due to the talcum-fine dust being deposited on their rooftops.
Never mind that someone will invariably be forced off the roads by cutting corners and excessive speed in inappropriate sections.
Never mind that the vehicle you might be driving isn’t your own, or it’s a bomb, or it’s a tax deductible business vehicle, or it’s disproportionately sized in relation to its driver and it may have 25 inch rims, and be turbo charged as well, so it really doesn’t matter.
My car has to last me another 10 years, but in the time of merely 15 months the car has deteriorated by four years.
Never mind that until a week ago, I had to crawl down the mountain, often taking 10 minutes to travel three kilometres.
Look; this letter won’t make any impact at all, and I don’t even know why I’m writing it, but it’s a warm night and I must have a whinge as I can’t get to sleep.
As a senior cynic, I should realise that leopards do not change their spots. I’m a slow learner. People will always be inconsiderate and non-thinking.
Graham Answerth
Healesville
Let’s get local
ANOTHER edition of the Mail has arrived and again Healesville news, letters and paid adverts dominate the paper.
I, for one, would like to know what is happening in my locality.
We do get another “local” paper but let’s face it, it has 80 per cent ads so most of the time is consigned to the recyclable bin.
So how about it, get your journalists to various parts of the Upper Yarra area and let’s know what is going on.
Henry King
Warburton
No help at all
I WRITE in response to the letters from Robyn McKinnell and Sue McKinnell (Mail, 20 February).
Neither myself, The Greens, nor the Wilderness Society have any problem with plantation timber be it pine or eucalypt.
I agree with Sue McKinnell that we all rely on wood products. The problem is clear felling native forests, made worse when it is happening in water catchments, during the worst drought on record, and heavily subsidised by us poor taxpayers.
I agree that the logging industry contributes to the local economy, and that’s great, but only a small fraction of that contributed by the wine industry, for example, which really is sustainable.
Considering the hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies that native forest logging requires to keep it afloat, the industry is far and away a liability to the community. The sooner it is stopped and moved into a plantation based industry the better.
I agree that logging contractors have their equipment used to fight fires and this is all well and good, however this can be also an underhanded way for them to get access to more trees, in areas where they would otherwise not be able to log in so called “salvage logging”, and clearing firebreaks far wider than necessary when passing through high value forest.
Sue’s logic is a little warped where she contends that unlogged forests would somehow die because they will “rot and fall over”. Her arrogance in believing that chainsaws and bulldozers are essential to the survival of a forest is breathtaking.
Stewart Kerr
Healesville
I WRITE as a former research forester with Melbourne Water who knows the forests of the Maroondah catchment. I would like to correct a few statements made by Sue McKinnell (Mail, 20 February).
Nearly all of the Black Spur regrowth is natural regrowth after the 1939 fires apart from a small area planted in the early 1940s immediately east of Fernshaw and south of the highway.
Mountain Ash is a tree that grows from seed fall after a major fire. The seedlings germinate at high densities of up to 20,000 plants per hectare rapidly self-thinning continuously from age 20 to about 90 trees per hectare at its current age of 68 years.
At its current age the surviving trees are still vigorous and healthy. However, the struggle for dominance and self-thinning will continue for at least another 200 plus years in the absence of fire. I certainly agree that the equipment used for timber harvesting can be essential in the fire fighting effort.
Pat O’Shaughnessy
Yarra Junction
Save our wildlife
TODAY’S logging is not sustainable because it is causing extinctions. And sadly extinctions can not be sustainable.
Over the past decade we have lost 100,000 hectares of Victoria’s forests to logging. In the mid 90s we had around 5000 Leadbeater’s possums. Today we would be lucky to have 1000 remaining. The major reason is habitat destruction from logging.
It may already be too late for the Leadbeater’s. This unique creature may be lost forever because of photocopy and toilet paper made from native forest.
While sawmills have been closing down, woodchipping has sky-rocketed. Anyone who sincerely supports local jobs would be appalled by export woodchipping. Nearly every log-truck we see is going down to Geelong – to be woodchipped then shipped off to Japan. It may be profitable but it is wrong.
I know the people involved in logging are decent folk, and I understand their fear of change, but the stakes are now far too high for a head-in-the-sand mentality. To hear Sue McKinnell (Mail, 20 February) say “Mountain Ash starts to deteriorate after 80 years” shows a clear bias. As a eucalypt passes its first century its value for woodchips and timber is lowered. But the hollows that form as it matures are of immense value to our wildlife.
Nearly all forest animals and birds need nesting hollows. This is why felling habitat trees is probably the most direct way logging is causing extinctions. Since these old growth giants have little value as a commodity, why not spare them?
Peter Wadham,
Healesville
