There is plenty to do and opportunities for all, Individuals, Groups or Companies.

Bushcare is great way of learning more about your local

environment while helping to preserve it for future generations.

Ideal for one off corporate or community days, or regular monthly sessions.

Join with

The Friends of Lane Cove National Park Help support their work and

keep in touch with happenings in the park

Find out more at

www.friendsoflanecovenationalpark.org.au

Contact us at folcnp@hotmail.com

or speak to the

Lane Cove National Park Volunteer Bushcare Co-ordinator 0419 753 806

How to Help

Produced by Friends of Lane Cove National Park

With assistance from Sydney Metropolitan Catchment Management Authority

and The Australian Government’s Caring for 0ur Country

Program

FAIRYLAND Lane Cove National Park

History, Heritage and Ecology

Where

Situated right next to one of the fastest growing commercial centres in Sydney, less than 3 kilometres from Chatswood and less than 10 kilometres from the centre of Sydney is Fairyland, part of Lane Cove National Park.

The almost 42 hectares of bushland sandwiched between Delhi Road and the Lane Cove River provides a home for endangered species including Powerful Owls, and other species such as Echidnas which, while not on the en-dangered list, are extremely uncommon this close to the centre of a major city.

The area is also home to three special groups of endangered plants known as Endangered Ecological Communities

Fairyland

Lane Cove National Park. One of the most urban of the National Parks, Lane Cove runs from Pennant Hills in the north to Hunters Hill in the south, providing an important environ-mental corridor. It is relatively small at 675 hectares, but has many kilometres of boundary and hundreds of neighbours. Fairyland is just one of many distinct areas within the park that need help.

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Map copy write SIX Maps NSW

Threats

Many weeds would look attractive in their native environment. It is just that in Australia there are not the restraints that there would be at home. The top picture shows Privet in full flower. After the flowers the bushes are covered in black berries, at-tractive to large birds including Currawongs. The berries then encourage them to stay in Sydney over winter, when they prey on the chicks and eggs of small birds; just another of the unexpected conse-quences of this weed invasion. Vines are particularly insidious, they can blanket and eventually kill not only shrubs and low growing vegetation, but even large mature trees. The photo below shows ’Morning Glory’ which has a large purple flower and on the left is ’Balloon Vine’ which features

the large ’balloon’ full of seed. They are just two of a whole range of problem vines.

Weeds are a major threat in this as in so many other areas. Most of the local soils are derived from sandstone and are very low in nutrients. Surprisingly this has resulted in a great diversity of plants that have adapted to these conditions. Weeds, mainly plants from overseas, generally gain a foothold when ’man’ has disturbed the soil and changed conditions, this can often be from the introduction of nutrients from a variety of sources including road runoff.

What is a Weed. The general definition of a weed is

a plant out of place. Under some circumstances a gum tree in the middle of a wheat field may well be considered a weed. Environmental weeds are those which can seriously affect native vegetation by forming mono cul-

tures where nothing else can germi-nate, or in the case of vines blan-keting and smothering the natives.

Privet

Ballon Vine

Morning Glory

Fairyland Fauna

The Powerful Owl. Listed as an ‘endangered species’ this is one of the top predators in Fairyland. Its main diet is the Ring Tail Possum . In recent years the reduction in fox numbers has lead to an increase in possums which has resulted in an increase in Powerful Owls.

Small Birds Because of the variety of environments Fairyland has extremely good small bird habitat. When small birds are disap-pearing in so many places in Sydney it is very encourag-ing to see so many different small birds in the area. Wrens, Silver Eyes, Thornbills, Honey Eaters, Wagtails and more can regu-larly be seen if you sit quietly .

Water Monitors and other reptiles can often be seen sunning them-selves near the river. As a ‘cold blooded’ animal their food require-ment is much less than mammals.

Hidden Neighbours. Many of the inhabi-tants of Fairyland prefer to keep to them-selves. Echidnas while rarely seen are known to live there and have even ventured into the Delhi Road commercial area. Sugar Gliders come out at night and even then are hard to spot, but they leave tell tail signs of their presence by making horizontal marks on Red Bloodwood trees when they are feed-ing.

Other smaller hidden inhabi-tants such as insects and invertebrates are essential parts of the food chain.

Heritage and History

Aboriginal Heritage For many thousands of years, since the sea level rose to its present

level after the last ice age, the Lane Cove River valley, including the Fairyland area, was home to the

Aboriginal people They utilised a wide range of local resources including the mullet and shell fish that flourished in the river, and many of the plants that can still

be seen in the area.

In 1810 the area that became Fairyland, and in fact most of the

western side of the Lane Cove River was included in the Field of Mars Common. A vast area that was in-tended to provide additional pasture and timber for a group of soldier settlers who had been given small plots in what is now Eastwood.

Later around 1895 when the govern-ment need to raise some money they started to sell off blocks.

Two that became Fairylands were purchased by the Swan family. First they grew straw-berries and sold them to passing river people; soon they found that starting the

’pleasure gardens’ made better

business sense.

During it’s heyday Fairyland even had it’s own dance hall. It is said that dur-ing World War II people would walk from Chatswood station to the

Mowbray Park bank of the river and shout for the ferry to come across and

pick them up. After WW II the best years had gone, with wider availability of the car people could go longer distances, Fairyland had lost some of it’s magic.

Arriving at Fairylands By River circa 1910

Fairyland Ecology

There are more than 500 different species of native plants in the Lane Cove National Park. A large number of them occur in Fairyland.

Different groups of plants, are referred to as ‘communities’.

Just as individual plants and animals can be listed as endangered, plant communities can also be listed as

endangered. There are three different Endan-gered Ecological Communities’

in Fairyland and other communities of plants which are vital for providing habitat for endangered

species of fauna.

It is hard to over emphasise the impor-tance of mangroves. They line the river-side living in the salt water where little else can exist. They provide the perfect nursery environment for a whole range of small creatures that are the basis of im-portant food chains. However they are not endangered in the Sydney area: because of the amount of silt that has been flushed down the river since European settlement, their areas are growing.

Ecology is a word we all use, but what does it really mean? The science of Ecology is the un-derstanding of interactions between both living and inert elements within an environment. It originated in the late 1700’s when it was first realised that plants were an important source of the oxygen we breathe. The more we learn, the more we come to realise how little we really know of these complex interactions and how removing one species from the chain can have disastrous effects on others, including our own.

Swamp Oak Flood Plains The dominant tree in the community found inland of the Mangroves is the ‘Swamp Oak’ or ‘She Oak’ ,Casuarina glauca . Also salt tolerant , but less so than mangroves this community is listed as endangered under the NSW Threatened Species Act.

Mangroves

Fairyland Ecology

Wetlands, there are two types of wetland area within Fairyland, both of which are Endangered. Close to the river banks there are small areas of Salt Marsh. Typical plants in this area include Warrigal Greens, used as a vegetable by the first settlers. Further from the river are the Fresh Water Wet Lands a really magical area where Paper Bark or Melaleuca, trees flourish. Here, on the right day you can hear the call of hundreds of frogs and see a myriad of small birds flying by.

What’s Flowering. Virtually when ever you walk through Fairyland

there will be something in flower. One way to identify the plant is to look on the

Friends of Lane Cove National Park web site,

where you can see pictures of ‘What’s

Flowering this Month’. www.friendsoflanecove

nationalpark.org.au

Sandstone Gully Forest. Higher up the slope the vegetation changes to the typical open forest of the local sandstone areas. Dominant trees include the Sydney Red Gum, Angophora costata with it’s red grey bark, Sydney Peppermint with long strips of bark hanging down, Blackbutt and Red Bloodwoods. Under this canopy is a really diverse mid storey with shrubs and small trees including Banksias, Wattles and ’Egg and Bacon’ Peas. On the ground there are a whole range of grasses, sedges and ground covers, including Grass Trees, Xanthoria sp. once used by aborigines to make spears and resin.

Boronia gives a splash of colour in late winter