Olive Hill Project Report

The Olive Hill project site has been around since the beginning of the Friends of Black Hill and Morialta having a long history. Starting from thick Olive trees to what is now mostly Eucalyptus Porosa, native shrubs and a mixture of native and mostly non-native ground cover as well as the many weedy Bridal Creeper, Boneseed, African Daisy and Saffron thistle when they are in season. These plants have been the focus of the past two working bees being Saffron Thistle in November and the others in May as marked in the map below. The focus points for our work across the past two working bees have gone away from the hilltop near the fenced area to base of the hill then climbing up it. This is because of the location of the Saffron Thistle for the November working bee and easy access for the May Community Day (working bee). But in this area which has been replanted by the Friends in past years. We are seeing plenty of great natives coming back after being burnt by the burn off. But this has also led to weeds coming out in greater numbers and sizes than previously seen.

We have been lucky to have the assistance of the fire crew going through the burnt off area as well as work on the agave we previously worked on both complementing our works.

Liz and Garth have also been spraying Olives on the northern side of the Woodforde Track for many years and have now completely treated the areas, Olives.

The continued focus of the project of the project site is to stop weed outbreaks before they become a bigger problem and potentially in future working on the ground cover.