With an anguished squawk, a white-faced heron let it be known it was not happy. It took flight on lanky wings as its feeding ground on the lower Sandy Bay Rivulet was invaded by a noisy, eager bunch of university students.
The elegant bird was not to know it but the students in gumboots were taking part in an environmental initiative, to not only clear the rivulet of rubbish but to plant reeds so that fish species would have somewhere to deposit their eggs.
The international students had enrolled in the University of Tasmania’s Days of Community Service program, on this occasion helping members of the Friends of the Sandy Bay Rivulet rehabilitate the watercourse to its former glory.
The rivulet has its source on kunanyi/Mt Wellington and the Friends eventually hope to create a trail which follows its lower route through South Hobart, Dynnyrne and Sandy Bay. For the past 15 years, the group has been doing the groundwork for the eventual trail, clearing portions of invasive weeds and planting native vegetation.
Encouraging new growth has included planting reeds in the tidal stretch of the rivulet at Marieville Esplanade and here the students provided a helping hand.
The watercourse is home to threatened native fish, particularly three species of galaxias.
The reed-planting was aimed primarily at the jollytail, or common galaxia, a small fish with an interesting life cycle in the rivulet. The eggs are laid during an autumn king tide, then as the tide drops the sticky eggs are suspended on reed stems safely out of the way of predators. When the next month’s king tide submerges the reed again, the young fish hatch and head out into the Derwent and Storm Bay. In spring they head back into the fresh water, where they live a for up to two years before spawning.
I’ve been a member of the Friends since the groups’ formation and it was wonderful to point out some of the watercourse’s wonders when I took charge of a group of the students last month.
In my group a young man from Texas felt totally at home wading in the mouth of the rivulet because he was studying marine biology but a student from Mumbai doing a business degree felt less comfortable.
And a third student, an accounting graduate from the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu, seeking to further her studies at UTAS, said that before arriving in Hobart she had never seen the sea.
“I just can’t stop coming down to Sandy Bay to look at it,” she said. “So peaceful.”
Pointing to the departing heron, she said it reminded her of the cranes they had in the Himalayas but the silver gulls were something new.
“We definitely don’t have them,” she said, adding with a laugh: “Not surprising we don’t have seagulls if we don’t have sea!”