A two-page leaflet in a series on “Threatened Vegetation Communities, this was published in 1998 by the Trust for Nature, Victoria.
Review Status: Pending
conservation; fire; water resources; pests; vegetation; climate change; biodiversity
A two-page leaflet in a series on “Threatened Vegetation Communities, this was published in 1998 by the Trust for Nature, Victoria.
This two-page leaflet of uncertain date lists 64 Ramsar sites, including the first in the world declared under the 1971 Ramsar convention (Cobourg Peninsula, 1974).
A four-page leaflet published in March 1993 by the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service.
This eight-page booklet Revegetation in Rural Landscapes outlines the results of research in western Victoria, funded by Deakin University and the Glenelg-Hopkins Catchment Management Authority.
This leaflet outlines incentives available under a National Landcare Program initiative.
A review of the comparative ecology of Red and Western Grey
Kangaroo in Australian Rangelands: An evaluation of the likely impact on the vegetation at Hattah-Kulkyne National Park. An 18-page report by the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Flora Fauna and Fisheries Unit, Mildura Office, North West Area. April 1994.
This small booklet was produced in 1976 by a team led by John Landy, one-time Technical Officer for the fledgling National Parks Authority and later Governor of Victoria, under the auspices of the Australian Institute of Agricultural Science (Victorian Branch).
It was launched in the rooms of the Royal Society of Victoria.
An official publication from 1961.
This rather quaint, reflective seven-page memo was written by Frank Gibbons (FR Gibbons), a soil conservationist with the Soil Conservation Authority of Victoria, housed in premises at Cotham Road Kew. “Quaint” by the standards of environmental assessment in 2025, but reflective of the times (1970).
Also, the memo offers a justification from within Christian ethics for nature conservation, respect for the earth and a modern stewardship. This is in contrast with the fundamentalist Christian position that would welcome apocalyptic collapse, a position based on the book of Revelation.
The file when originally scanned was titled “FR_Gibbons_Public_Land_Use_Guidelines_Aust_Christian_Movement_1970.pdf”. The document was apparently a manuscript for a magazine article. Anyone who knows more about the eventual outcome of the essay is invited to contact PaRC.
Frank Gibbons was a quiet, quietly spoken and unassuming officer who carries no little credit for the abandonment of the land clearing scheme in the Little Desert of 1968-1970. Among other agitation, he addressed the students in Dr EHM (Tim) Ealey’s applied ecology lectures at Monash University in 1969 and the students through the Biological Society took an active part in the campaign, including handing out leaflets in the Melbourne City Square.
Many, many individuals and groups of course contributed to a momentum of that campaign. Frank Gibbons’s contribution to orderly land-use planning was another level above quiet agitation. With his colleagues at the Soil Conservation Authority, and RG Downes its Director not least, the scientists involved in land assessment lay the groundwork for the land-use studies of the Land Conservation Council established by legislation in 1970. Therein lies a tale! For more, read Libby Robin’s book on the saga!
The Australian Protected Areas Congress 2008 was held at Twin Waters Resort, Queensland.
Read the consolidated proceedings Protected Areas in the Century of Change, ~279 pages, here. A wealth of information, from a formidable cast of knowledgeable people.
Masterclass
The Congress included a Masterclass on “Management Effectiveness Evaluation” of protected areas. The aims were to:
Participants (minus email addresses, but PaRC holds a copy)
Design and analysis issues for ME evaluations
Process guidelines for indicator selection for Protected Area Management Effectiveness Evaluations
Management Effectiveness Evaluation within State of the Parks Assessment and Reporting Systems: Draft Principles
Ridgeline, the newsletter of the Australian Research Council (ARC) linkage project titled “Building capacity for adaptive management in protected areas through improved systems for monitoring and evaluation”:
Presentations
Introductory presentation. Marc Hockings and Fiona Leverington.
Linking management effectiveness evaluations with on-ground management activities: An example from the NSW State of the Parks Program. Andrew Growcock.
Designing Reliable Management Effectiveness Assessments. Carly Cook.
Linking evaluation to the needs of managers. Chris Jacobson.
Great Parks Network Benchmarks: An analysis of membership management performance. Parks Forum.
Spatial tools for understanding performance within a landscape context. Josie Kelman.
Effectively managing management effectiveness. Peter Stathis et al.
Performance Assessments in Western Australia. Conservation Council of Western Australia.
Linking short-term and longer term evaluation. Tony Varcoe.
Discussion
Slides of the discussion – consolidated
Findings – with shorter list of participants, email addresses deleted.
Geographer Peter Cabena, originally resident of Victoria, completed a Masters dissertation in 1980 on the grazing of cattle in the Victorian high country, having conducted a deep dive into state government archives, and a significant round of interviews with mountain district cattlemen and others. The original thesis can be viewed at https://www.highcountryhistory.org.au/historical-item/grazing-the-high-country-victoria-an-historical-and-political-geography-of-high-country-grazing-in-victoria-1835-to-1935/.
Peter returned to the subject in 2014 to review, refine & expand the scope and content of his research, finally calling time out on his efforts on 4 February 2025, when he passed it to the Secretary of PaRC for uploading.
PaRC is delighted to have the privilege of publishing this monumental work with its snapshot of the views of people affected by a highly controversial and widely discussed issue of land-use and park management. Being a research dissertation not formally published in the scholarly literature this work has, until now, remained relatively unknown to the broader community.
If any part of this publication breaches copyright or privacy, please be assured by the author and PaRC that this is inadvertent; and don’t hesitate to let the Secretary know so that the breach can be rectified.
First published 17 Sep. 2025. Minor editorial corrections and pagination 7 November 2025. Proofreading for consistency of style has not been completed.
INVITATION TO COMMENT
Peter Cabena offers to readers the opportunity to comment on any perceived factual errors or issues regarding interpretations.Please submit to PaRC via secretary AT SYMBOL parcaustralia.com.au.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
ABBREVIATIONS & DEFINITIONS
LIST OF FILES WITH SIZES
CHAPTER 1: PASTORAL EXPLORATION & EXPANSION
a) Background
b) Settlement of the Alpine Periphery
c) Exploring the Snow Country
d) Pioneer Mountain Grazing
e) Gold Discoveries and the Rise of Smaller Scale Pastoralists
CHAPTER 2: HOW THE ADMINISTRATION OF LAND TENURE INFLUENCED SNOW COUNTRY GRAZING
a) The Necessity for and Consequences of a Land Tenure System
b) The Impact of Land Selection
c) The 1878 Crown Lands Commission
d) The 1884 Land Act
e) Long Term Increase in Pastoral Occupation after 1884
CHAPTER 3: LATER LAND SETTLEMENT DREAMS AND SCHEMES
a) Land Selection in the Snow Country
b) Land Settlement Schemes
c) Tourism
CHAPTER 4: HOW GRAZIERS USED THE SNOW COUNTRY
a) Cattle Country
b) The Number of Snow Country Graziers
c) Trends in Stocking Levels
d) Drought Relief Grazing
e) Common Practices and Structures
f) Social Capital
CHAPTER 5: A TRADITIONAL PASTORAL ECOLOGY (AN APPLIED PASTORAL ECOLOGY, AND LANDSCAPE CHANGE)
CHAPTER 6: PUBLIC INTERESTS, PUBLIC VALUES AND PUBLIC PURPOSE LAND RESERVATIONS
CHAPTER 7: (WINDING DOWN): CHANGING SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL CIRCUMSTANCES
CHAPTER 8: EPILOGUE
APPENDICES
A. LOCAL HISTORIES
Western Fringe
Buffalo Platea
Upper Goulburn River Watershed
Baw Baw Plateau
Central Core
The Greater Bogong High Plains
The Snowy Range & Dargo High Plains
Far East
The Snowy – lndi Divide
Nunniong Plateau
B. EXPOSING FERDINAND MUELLER’S MISLEADING CLAIM
D. LIST OF SNOW COUNTRY GRAZING RUNS AND THEIR OCCUPANTS. (Note: this is an Excel file. If it does not transmit successfully, please let PaRC know).
E. SHEEP GRAZING IN THE SNOW COUNTRY AS RECORDED IN THE ORAL HISTORY
F. NOTES OF INTERVIEWS WITH SNOW COUNTRY GRAZIERS, 1975-1978 (128 pages).
MidCoast Walking Cycling and Trail based Activity Strategy
This strategy is part of the MidCoast Parks & Recreation Planning Portfolio, a group of 9 strategies and plans for the management of the 827 parks and reserves, and the activities that take place in them, on the MidCoast of NSW.
This strategy sets out a 10 year plan for the management, enhancement and addition of paths and trails throughout our urban, coastal and mountain reserves.
Coorong District Council website, 31 July 2025.
This charming 25 ha arboretum is a short drive off the Princes Highway in the Lower Murray district, Coorong District Council.
Council manages the property. See the brochure for more details.
Playspace design and maintenance guidelines
These guidelines have been developed by play planners and designers, as well as council operational staff who are experienced with play design and maintenance.
MCC Policy – Use of Public Open Space by Commercial Fitness Trainers Policy
MCC Procedure – Use of Public Open Space by Commercial Fitness Trainers Policy
These two documents, the Policy, and the Procedure, set out Council’s position on the management of commercial fitness trainers in their use of public open space in MidCoast Council area.
This charming report of 117 pages by biologist Evelyn Elfick commences with a generic explanation of aquatic systems then includes a list of some 89 aquatic invertebrates identified during a survey, with information and original drawings for each one. Hotel Creek is in the Chichester State Forest adjacent to Barrington Tops National Park in central New South Wales.
Although the title is Aquatic Insects of the Chichester State Forest, the list of fauna includes one fish (a gudgeon) and several molluscs, crustaceans and other invertebrates that are not insects.
The introductory ~20 pages could form a useful introduction to aquatic systems for secondary-level teachers as it is not site-specific.
Evelyn Elfick has supplied the following explanation by way of background:
“While studying as an undergraduate at the University of New England, I started collecting for a visiting lecturer from the USA. Her PhD was on freshwater aquatic insects and I collected ephemeroptera [mayflies] from rivers and streams from the South Coast at Bega to just north of the Hunter.
“I became so interested in the diversity of the then “unpolluted” freshwater systems that I decided to continue and chose Burra Creek as the main study area. This booklet was originally produced in A5 format to be used as a field guide for people working in the area.”
Evelyn may be contacted via elfick AT SYMBOL bigpond.com.
This two-page tour guide is interesting for the description of some of the ecological features including the native grassland.
The brief internal paper Determining Land Use was written in 1984 as a guide for staff of the Metropolitan Parks Branch of the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works. During that era (1980s), the Branch was taking occupation of numerous properties zoned Proposed Public Open Space, many of them worn out or run down (given that sale to the Board was more or less inevitable). Field staff were required to assess properties and decide whether to manage them for environmental conservation or develop for some form of public recreation, or something else. The paper is signed by Tony Whitham, but is marked in Trevor Arthur’s handwriting as by Geoff Edwards.
Roll on two decades, and the same Geoff Edwards in the Department of Natural Resources and Mines in Queensland, wrote a more sophisticated and comprehensive paper with a similar purpose. However, the scope of the land uses that departmental officers (who were the target audience of this Resource Planning Guideline) were from time to time required to evaluate were much broader, covering virtually all the land uses for which various parcels of Crown land could be allocated. This Guideline F9 Determining Most Appropriate Use was published in 2005 and appeared briefly on the Department’s website.
There is a subtext implied by the term “most appropriate use”. This concept is one grounded in public interest, and not in economic profit. It is in tension with the term “highest and best use” that is widely used as the basis of planning in planning schemes and water allocation. “Highest and best” implies the most intensive or economically profitable use (as determined by the market) that can be permitted under the regulations in force; “most appropriate” implies the use that maximises the benefit to the community, deriving from the intrinsic attributes of the land nestled in its locality; with economic potential, being only one criterion. The difference between these two concepts is explained in other papers in this series of Resource Planning Guidelines, obtainable by request to PaRC or from Trove.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of this modest one-sheet black-and-white leaflet dated October 1969. From the Save our Bushlands movement, triggered in particular by the Little Desert controversy in the late 1960s, and crystallised in this leaflet, the Victorian Government cancelled the Little Desert development scheme and legislated to create the Land Conservation Council with far-reaching consequences for the disposition of unallocated State Land.
Here PaRC reproduces a number of visitor leaflets and other descriptive materials.
Fauna of YVMP handout – about late 1980s. Authored probably by Visitor Services Officer Georgie Waterman and Ranger Patrick Fricker.
Yarra Valley Scats, a staff newsletter, authored by Patrick Fricker in ~1986.
Planting record 1991-1994.
This roneoed report is undated but would seem to date from about the declaration of the Yarra Valley Metropolitan Park in the late 1970s, when the board resolved to develop the park out of the area set aside in the planning scheme as “proposed public open space”. It includes information about the natural features and other characteristics of the area and the provisions of the planning scheme.
The Great Yarra Parklands: See separate post.
