Remnant Rail Reserves

SERIES 32 | Episode 14

Millie visits one of a network of ‘mini national parks’ hidden along Melbourne’s rail tracks, and meets the team maintains them - including using fire to keep them healthy.

As you travel on Melbourne trains, you might spot tiny patches of spring wildflowers, colouful meadows or lush woodlands stuck between dumped rubbish, industrial estates, roads and wasteland.  Millie has spotted some on her work commute and today she can finally visit one and discover what they’re about. These reserves are normally off-limits to the public, but she’s been allowed access to a reserve in Melbourne’s outer north-west.

Metro Trains’ Biodiversity Manager Neal Masters explains that it’s an example of volcanic plains grasslands, which is a critically endangered ecosystem. Only 1% remains of the grasslands that used to stretch from Melbourne to the South Australian border. The fragments that are left are incredible valuable - this one is only the size of a couple of basketball parks but these tiny reserves contain a huge range of plants and animals, such as Growing Grass Frogs, Striped Legless Lizards and Golden Sun Moths. Some rail reserves are even home to mammals such as the Southern Brown Bandicoot. This reserve includes at least one threatened plant: the arching flax lily.

Threats include weed infestation, dumped rubbish, climate change and more.

Some of the plants are suited to growing in gardens, including Common Everlasting daisies and Fibrous Spear-grass.

Ecologist Michael Longmore leads the teams that tackles the main problem – weeds. Even at this ‘high-quality’ reserve, there are 22 weed species to 44 native plants. They do a lot of hand weeding, some spraying and occasional burning, working with cultural owners to learn the best techniques.

Being able to use fire again in recent few years is a game-changer, says Michael: “It makes a big difference in terms of allowing us to get in & do thorough weed control, but we’ve also become aware of different species coming up that weren’t recorded at first - they might have been hidden under the biomass (thatch) of grass or simply emerging from dormancy now the biomass is burnt off.”

Filmed on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country | Diggers Rest, Vic