Back to County - Restoring habitat at Numeralla

In April 2021, The Mulloon Institute’s Peter Hazell, Bill McAlister and Joe Skuse travelled to a property near Numeralla (east of Cooma, NSW) to catch up with the good people from Back to Country and to work with them in bringing life back to an eroded, fire ravaged landscape. 

Back to Country is an initiative lead by Yuin Elder Uncle Max Dulumunmun Harrison, which provides aboriginal and non-aboriginal people the opportunity to learn about traditional Aboriginal culture and to heal country.

The gully restoration work is part of a larger project aimed at restoring wildlife refuges and corridors after the devastating fires in the summer of 2019/20. The property is owned by Richard and Alison Swain, who care for injured and orphaned animals such as koalas, wombats, wallabies, possums, bats, lizards and birds.

The project was funded through a Wires Landcare Australia grant. Greening Australia donated several thousand trees and The Mulloon Institute donated its time and expertise in gully restoration and landscape rehydration. 

It was a weekend filled with much ceremony and on-ground activity.

Back to Country crew assisting in the construction of a log sill crossing structure.

Back to Country crew – L to R – Richard, Greg, Tyson, Jack, Byron, Nathan, Sky and Joel.

On Saturday the Back to Country crew got busy and began constructing a log sill leaky weir crossing across an eroded gully.

And, on Sunday they were joined by about 20 members of the community as well as Numeralla Landcare where four more rock weir structures were built across the same gully and several hundred native trees, shrubs and groundcovers were planted. .

Volunteers building rock weirs and planting trees, shrubs and grasses.

Further up the gully, a small excavator got to work building an earth bank across the gully, which will revert high flows from the gully and back onto the adjacent floodplain.  

A solid morning’s work was rounded off with a BBQ lunch, which was then followed by a traditional smoking ceremony. During the ceremony, the Back to Country men gifted each of the participants personal plant and animal totems. In a show of gratitude and of deep respect for Mother Earth, participants were gifted the responsibility of looking after some of this country’s most iconic plant and animal species and the ecosystems on which they depend. 

Nathan standing front of a scar tree and explaining the significance of the area in which everyone was standing.

It was a poignant reminder that we are all inexorably connected to the natural world. If we look after her, she will look after us. If we degrade her, we degrade ourselves. 

The Mulloon Institute looks forward to building on this relationship with the men and women from Back to Country as we heal the land together.