Diario del proyecto Tyenna River Willows

Vicky Bonwick, Roger Parkyn
74047034RL: MGA Zone 55: 474044E 5270336N
Initial treatment of previously mapped willows DCP No. 13. Easy 15' walk up RL from Sharpes road bridge along forestry 4wd track, then open forest to tributary on RL opposite brown shed. 5-6 trees about ranging from 20 - 40cm diameter spread over 50m up the tributary - hard to see from the river. Drilled and filled and sprayed single rings of pink spray paint above treatments. Not much rerooting, so treatment will probably be effective.

Vicky Bonwick, Andrew Mollison, Roger Parkyn plus 7 other packrafters. Flynn, Cerri and Mel shown treatments methods, PPE and safety protocols ready for induction by Morgan.
When: Sun 18/09/2022
Where: Packrafted Tyenna River Station Road to Sharpes Road.

• 71016765RR: Previously treated willows river right 100m downstream of Station Road houses are definitely dead but there's still a live one next to one of the houses that'll need permission to tackle.

• 72216863RL: MGA Zone 55: 472213E 5268633N First treatment: DCP No. 07 River Left
  Drilled and filled main trunks and cut and pasted rooting branches and hauled up bank. Will definitely need revisiting in a few months time as lots of re-rooting branches possibly missed.

• 73116989RR: MGA Zone 55: 473109E 5269889N New willow mapped river right 50m from house. Will need stakeholder engagement as outside of riverine environment. Couldn't get close but showed exactly same leaf budding as other willows.

The day started out with heavy rain. Continued to drizzle on and off. Will be interesting to see whether this has any impact on the poison.
Total of six participants in attendance. Four worked quite a distance up river left. Two worked upstream on river right.

Unfortunately had to skip multiple trees on river right due to steep bank and high water level. River left team had a lot more luck.

Combination of axe and drill methods used. I updated two observations with time of treatment and techniques. Should had done this for more trees. Also this area of the river had more trees than in our initial observations.

Noticed that several willows on river right had previously been sawn. Also several trees were already partially dead with no apparent signs of being poisoned recently.

Overall fine day out. There will be regular monthly trips run by the catchment program team alternating between Friday and Saturdays.

Who: Vicky Bonwick, Paul Steane, Roger Parkyn
When: 2/04/2022
Initial treatments: Sites 01 and 03 on River Left
Follow up treatments:
1) River Left between Junee Road and Site 01 on western most overflow channel (-42.751002463658516, 146.62311670483078) Previously treated in 2021 but was still showing signs of life where branches touched the ground and had re-rooted. One small tree had been missed.
2) Immediately downstream of site 03, single tree on River Right had been treated 2021 when water was too high. Branches had re-rooted in river bed. All removed and sprayed.

Lessons learned:
Need about a litre of spray for each team per day and 1 dabber bottle.
When water is low it's the only time to cut (loppers), dab and physically remove all re-rooting branches from river bed. (Easy to do, increases effectiveness of main trunk treatments and removes paddling hazards immediately.) Wetsuit + neoprene booties in boots worked well.

Finished Pillingers Creek south of Maydena
Finished Cricket Pitch tributary
Finished Observation 6 area upstream of Station Road (and retreated obs 2-6 where needed)

Participants: Vicky Bonwick, Roger Parkyn and Derwent Catchment crew

Next on to do list: all the River Left clumps whilst river is low: INaturalist obs: 01, 03, 07.

Event log kept in spreadsheet by Vicky Bonwick as at 25/03/2022 (we need a collaboration space!)

Date Location Supervision Activity Notes Participants
25/10/2020 NA PWW Admin Paddling Willow Warriors Facebook formed Vicky Bonwick
28/11/2020 Maydena sewerage Farm area DCP Control first event attended by paddlers Peter Higgins, Andrew Bowen, and Vicky Bonwick
24/01/2021 Maydena Sewer Farm to Tyenna Road PWW Mapping "packrafted and mapped from Maydena Sewerage Farm to Fitzgerald Station Road - log choked then Fitzgerald Station Road to Tyenna Road - dream run" Peter Higgins, Vicky Bonwick
30/01/2021 Tyenna Road to National park PWW Mapping "packrafted and mapped from Tyenna Road to Newbury Road - pretty good paddling then Newbury Road to National park - Horrendous willow jams and blackberry thickets." Peter Higgins, Vicky Bonwick, Dave Gray
13/03/2021 Westerway DCP Control ?? Peter Higgins, Vicky Bonwick, Paul Black(?)
15/05/2021 Maydena to Station Road DCP Control Pellet treatment for points 2, 4, 5, 7, 8 (VB OBS) Vicky Bonwick, Peter Higgins
27/11/2021 Westerway DCP Control Picnic stretch RR clean up and Follow up for above Vicky Bonwick, Paul Black, Andrew Mollison and Roger Parkyn
26/02/2022 Maydena Stadium area DCP Control Treated tributary aside cricket pitch Vicky Bonwick, Paul Black, Peter Higgins
25/03/2022 Maydena to Station Road DCP Control Finished Pillingers Creek, Cricket Pitch and Observation 6 Vicky Bonwick, Roger Parkyn

This was the second of our packraft base survey trips.

Started from Tyenna Road and made it all the way to the national park bridge at mt field national park.

River level at 0.3m

Dave and Vicky came along. The river is quite navigable up to the newbury road bridge, quite fun paddling, but very low.

Two or three low logs that could potentially be a hazard at higher water but easily managed at this level. I think at 0.5m would be great.

It looks like another paddler has come through here somewhat recently with a small handsaw and cut off a number of willow branches between sharpes 'road' and newbury road. They just dropped them all in the river where they cut them off and they are already starting to drop roots and form little islands of willows in the middle of the river. Might be worth putting a small education sign at some of the carparks near the bridges to advise people to not drop willow cuttings anywhere near water.

After newbury road its a whole different ball game. multiple log jams, solid willows on both banks that at times touch in the middle. Large complex log jams with little whirl pools sucking all the river under them. Not much fun. Also a large infestation of black berries along the right bank which make avoiding the log jams a bit risky in the pack rafts.

The high density mess clears up in the deeper part of the river behind the weir on weir road. The area next to left of field camp ground has relatively lower density of willows compared to the jungle of mess just up stream.

Between the weir and the national park bridge there are very few willows, just a couple of small examples that could probably be cleaned up in a day.

It might be the case that the national park is doing something to keep them under control. Possible they should be notified that they have a small incursion starting again along the river right bank.

overall, a fun day out.

We conducted the first packraft based survey for willows on the Tyenna River today.

Started around 11:40am from the water treatment plant at maydena, finished up at the Tyenna Rd bridge near the Marriots Falls track.

Hit quite a few log jams which made for some slow going between the water treatment plant and Fitzgerald Station Road. After that it was pretty smooth sailing with the occasional shallow section and few log jams.

Luckily not too many willows have managed to take hold in the reach