RECLAIMING SAND DUNES

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31923, 26 February 1969, Page 13

RECLAIMING SAND DUNES

Valuable work in land ; stabilisation by the checking of sand drifts on a large soldier - settlement fanning area in the north-east coast area of Tasmania is being : achieved by Mr D. F. A. ! Steane.

Tasmania’s only sand dune reclamation and land development officer, Mr Steane was a 1966-67 Churchill Fellow

and furthered his research work in Britain, Europe, Canada and the Middle East. He is in charge of a team of men in the sand dune reclamation unit of the Tasmanian Lands and Surveys Department. Commencing their work in

1954, Mr Steane and his team of between 10 and 15 men, with their equipment and implements, have stabilised

between 1200 and 1500 acres of sand. The fine white sand blows if unchecked to ruin pastures, clog drains and obliterate roads.

The sand is stilled by the sowing of marram grass, lupins, pines and boobyalla wattle, which also provide shelter and shade. The marram grass originally was imported from the United Kingdom and Holland.

Reserves have been built up by the establishment and development of nurseries, not only of the grass, but pines and boobyallas. These are planted as part of a huge reclamation plan, and many other plants are present among the marram grass.

Seeds of these other species have been blown in by the wind or have come ready fertilised by the droppings of birds and animals, and all these plants help to further stabilise the dunes. But the main agent in the checking of the shifting sands is the planting of marram grass by Mr Steane and his men.

To do this they use a small crawler-type tractor to draw a massive marram grass planter over the deep windblown sand dunes, which for years bad been encroaching on the farms at Waterhouse, the soldier-settler area. The planter is manned by four of Mr Steane’s team who feed it with marram grass, supplies of which are drawn from the nurseries, established at key points. Among the special heavy equipment used is a tussock skimmer employed to undercut the marram grass in the nurseries, thus making it easier to lift by hand ready for the planter.

Mr Steane uses a threefurrow ridger for planting and this implement has replaced the tedious old spade method. It draws furrows into which the grass, fed by three men riding on the planter, goes in roots down. Mr Steane also uses a large hydraulically - operated skim-

mer which has greatly facilitated the work.

Mr Steane fought private battles with the sand dunes before joining the dep<yrtment, because he spent two winters with a farmer at Cape Portland in the far north-east of the State, and for a time did similar work in New Zealand. He said when he pioneered the work at Waterhouse that he was one of “three dumb men with a spade,” because money, equipment and knowledge were limited but since then, from his headquarters along the Waterhouse Road, he has moulded and trained the dunes by his varying techniques. Apart from his planting methods of taming the dunes he has trudged this land between the sea and the soldier-settler blocks planting and building scrub fences where the “blow outs” occur. “Scrub fences allow the sand to build up,” he explained. “Sometimes on the wet flats we use high paling fences.” Mr Steane, who studied sand dune reclamation as a Churchill Fellow in England, Canada and the Middle East, sees the problem as one throughout the temperate world. “The ultimate use of dunes and the system used is a matter of local economics, the climate, and the fertility of the land,*’ he claims. Mr Steane said that in Britain, Europe and America despite an increasing shortage of land and increasing populations, one basic principle had emerged: this was the importance of land for recreation and wild life reserves.

Converted sand dunes were often best suited for this rather than for primary production. Australian News and Information Bureau.

The photograph shows the planter with its team of four men planting nursery - grown marram grass. The planter is drawn by a crawler tractor.