On the 2nd of November, fifty people gathered at the Doug Rawlinson’s beautiful Kentgrove property to learn more about native threatened species in the Goulburn region. The event kicked off a new partnership between the Australian National Botanic Gardens and the Australian River Restoration Centre that has, as its focus, conserving and promoting the values of threatened native species as part of our on-ground restoration efforts.
We were also delighted to be joined by Wiradjuri man Adam Shipp from Yurbay Consulting, who shared his people’s knowledge of the food and medicinal uses of native plants. Yurbay is the aboriginal word for ‘seed’ which made it even more special to have Adam spend the afternoon with us.
Our wonderful Rivers of Carbon team member, Mary Bonet, put together this film of the afternoon that we are sure you will enjoy.
The key points from the presentations have been turned into resources, which you can find below, including a new guide ‘collecting and caring for seeds from Australian native plants’ that is based on the great presentation provided by Lucy and Ben. We hope you find these resources useful.
Siwan, Lori, Lucy, Ben and Mary 🙂
Resources
Adam Shipp, Yurbay
Valuing our native plants for bush tucker and medicine
The name of Adam’s company is Yurbay (you-ra-bi), which is the Wiradjuir word for ‘seed’, a highly appropriate connection to our afternoon focusing on native plants. Adam gave us a taste, look and smell session of bush plants, and we all enjoyed sampling his collection of commonly found plants in the Goulburn and Canberra region. His passion for his culture shone through, and we all appreciated the time he spent with us sharing his knowledge about native plants and their many uses. If you are interested in learning more about bush tucker and medicine, Adam recommended a couple of websites you can explore:
Working together to protect and restore our threatened Australian native plants
Learning more about the threatened native plants in our region enables us to integrate the protection and restoration of these species into our river and land management efforts.
Collecting and caring for seed from Australian native plants
The reintroduction of species into the landscape relies on seed collection for plant propagation and direct seeding. Here’s a handy ‘how-to’ guide covering things you need to think about when collecting, propagating and storing native seed.
Photos from the day:
Lucy, Ben, Siwan & Lori with the Stock and Waterways Guide in the rainforest walkway that takes you through to the presentation space at Kentgrove.
Lori and Lucy welcoming people to the afternoon event. It was a really hot afternoon so we had plenty of bush tucker ice tea on hand.
Doug Rawlinson owner of Kentgrove talking about the history of the property which has had many different enterprises in its long history.
Siwan and Lori talking about Rivers of Carbon projects in the region and the approach the program takes to valuing natural and social capital.
David Taylor taking us through a few of the threatened plant species in the Goulburn region.
Adam Shipp from Yurbay talking about bush tucker and medicine.
Ben and Lucy sharing their knowledge about collecting and propagating native seeds.
A big thankyou to Mary Bonet for these photos.
