Bunhybee Grasslands is a prime example of native southern temperate grassland.
Bunhybee Grasslands lies at an altitude of between 710 and 760 metres in a side-valley of the Shoalhaven River, 35km south of Braidwood.
The property is bounded on the west by the 946-metre Bunhybee Peak, and on the east by Jerrabat(t)gulla Rd. It is 4km south of the intersection of Jerrabatgulla Rd with the Krawaree Rd (which runs between Braidwood and Cooma), and 1km north of the intersection with Harts Rd.
It comprises Lots 7, 165 and 164 within DP 754890, Parish of Kwawarree, County of Murray. The Lots are roughly rectangles lying in a north-south direction. Based on the Kain 1:25,000-series map, the middle of the middle Lot (Lot 165) is at about Latitude S35/40/40 or -35.6778 and Longitude E149/46/30 or 149.6083. One set of GPS readings at the middle of the house-location gave S35/40/385, E149/36/582, and elevation 2500ft (762m) +/- 30m (all of which are verrry close to the map-coordinates).
Here is the Google Map view, centred on the nearest place-name that Google Maps recognises, which is Jerrabattgulla, 3km south of the property.
Here are Google's directions from Braidwood to Jerrabattgulla, 3km beyond the entrance to the property. Here is a local-area map, and a detailed sketch, and a surveyor's map.
We understood the area's long-term-average rainfall to be about 800 mm (32 ins) p.a. However:
There seemed to be no Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) site anywhere in the upper Shoalhaven valley, with the nearest official climate statistics being for Braidwood and Braidwood Racecourse, both c. 35km north.
However, after trawling the BoM site, I located the page for weather-station data. A search on 'Jerrabattgulla' found the location 35.68° S, 149.58° E, and it says station 070261 is at Gilston, at 35.69° S 149.59° E (the next property south of Warragandra, 2.5 km SW of Bunhybee Grasslands, and at 725m, i.e. the same altitude. Here are the Gilston pages for daily rainfall, and monthly rainfall.
The extract in this spreadsheet includes a few missing months for which I've assumed average rainfall. It suggests:
Other weather-stations nearby are:
The property has always had limited water available for livestock. As a result, the property has always been lightly grazed, and appears to have never been improved with fertiliser, nor with non-native, higher-food-value grasses. Visiting professional and amateur ecologists have found about 180 native species of grasses and forbs on the property, and there are only relatively small problems with weeds (about 20 species, only a few of significance).
We're unsure of the date on which the land became property under white man's law.
We'll have a guess at somewhere between 1830 and 1890. [We expect to find some local historians who can throw light on the matter. And we intend to extract whatever we can from the Land Titles Office / LPI / whatever it might be called at any given time.]
Thinking in terms of centuries, the uphill slopes in the NE of the block appear to have been at the transition-point between a snow-gum grassland on the lower side (710m) and dry sclerophyll, i.e. local non-snow-gum eucalypt-dominated forest (760m).
The lower-altitude snow-gum woodland appears to have been cleared (we assume at this stage in the 1830-1890 timeframe), with the intention of grazing. The snow-gums have since grown back, mainly along the road on the western side. Rainer Rehwinkel confirmed that the forest there has the appearance of re-growth rather than original forest remnant.
Before clearance, the block may therefore have been either mostly snow-gum woodland, or a mix of snow-gum woodland and open grassland. Either way, the majority of it has been open grassland for many decades now, has never been improved with either fertiliser or introduced grass-seed, is almost entirely native, and is very rich in terms of both grass species and forbs.
Much of the area was [originally?] owned by James Monaghan from 1887 until the 1920’s (based on an extract from the 1927 County of Murray Parish map, in the Plan of Management, p. 5). [We need to track that down.]
We interpolate that, from the grazier's perspective, the land was good enough to be grazed, but not good enough to be improved. The general consensus is that the reason may have been partly the mediocre soil, but mainly because the water supply was insufficient to support large flocks or herds on a continuing basis.
From the 1930s to the 1950s, what is now Bunhybee Grasslands was part of 'Warragandra', a 6,000-acre property that extended from west of Jerrabatgulla Ck to at least the Krawaree/Cooma Rd, and some distance north. When Mick Quilty, the owner of the then 'Warragandra', died in the 1950s, his nephews sub-divided it up among themselves.
These days, the remnant 'Warragandra', the homestead and adjacent paddocks, is the adjacent property to the west of Bunhybee Grasslands and its southern neighbour Parlour Grasslands, to the west, across Jerrabattgulla Road.
One of the new properties from the break-up done by Mick Quilty's sons was known locally as 'The Parlour Paddock'. It was 1,049 acres / 424ha and was managed as two large grazing paddocks, 161 ha and 242 ha in size (David O'Connell, Dec 2007, p. 5 of the Plan of Management – the source of the discrepancy of 21ha is unclear). 'The Parlour Paddock' extended from Jerrabatgulla Rd to Cooma Rd.
The Parlour Paddock was acquired on 8 Mar 2004 by [first name?] Graham. He subdivided into the four current properties (partly from David O'Connell, Feb 2009) [date and other details to be confirmed]:
On [DATE?], Greg Baines of DECC in Queanbeyan saw that [some of? all of?] the subdivided properties were for sale, recognised the conservation qualities of at least the two westernmost properties, and mentioned them to his colleague Rainer Rehwinkel.
Rainer visited Bunhybee Grasslands on 10 Sep 2007, and the Parlour Grasslands property on 30 Oct 2007. He visited Parlour again on 14 Dec 2007. He prepared Species Lists for each of those visits.
On [DATE?], he alerted the Nature Conservation Trust (NCT). NCT is a statutory company of the NSW government, whose purpose is to acquire properties with high conservation value, and prepare them for re-sale with conservation agreements in place. A conservation agreement (or see this brochure) is a means of inscribing onto the property title appropriate restrictions on usage plus commitments to care that must be respected by not only the current owner, and not only the next buyer (which is as far as a normal covenant would reach), but by all subsequent buyers as well.
NCT purchased the two properties adjacent to Jerrabatgulla Rd [DATE?], in order to enable assessment, protection under Conservation Agreements, and re-sale.
NCT gave the properties their current names [CHECK THAT].
NCT advertised the properties for sale, and promoted them at a K2C event at Ingelara in April 2008. We nibbled at the bait, and visited the property several times. We agreed to buy Bunhybee in about June 2008. The sale was completed at the end of 2008.
In early 2010, NCT sold Parlour Grasslands to Canberra Airport. The airport sits on similar grassland, and each expansion eliminates some more of it. The company therefore has offset obligations. The relevant executive has assured us that the property will be maintained, not just because of the obligation under the Plan of Management, but also because their intention is to harvest seed from it.
This is a page within the Bunhybee Grasslands Web-Site, home-page here, and site-map here
Created: 7 October 2008; Last Amended: 1 April 2010
