Western Australian Wheatbelt Research Articles

Four new Western Australian species related to Hibbertia axillibarba (Dilleniaceae)

Hibbertia axillibarba was described in 2000 as a short-range endemic species known only from South Ironcap, a semi-arid, banded ironstone hill in the Western Australian southern Goldfields. Subsequently, several specimens collected from sandplain habitats in the Western Australian wheatbelt, varying from close to, to distant from, South Ironcap, were determined as H. aff. axillibarba or H. cf. axillibarba at the Western Australian Herbarium. Close study of these specimens has shown that none matches H. axillibarba, which on current knowledge remains endemic on South Ironcap; instead, they comprise three distinct species, which are described here as Hibbertia arenicola K.R.Thiele, H. erioclada K.R.Thiele and H. elachophylla K.R.Thiele & T.Hammer. A fourth new species, H. lanulipes K.R.Thiele, is included in this paper as it is likely to be related to the others, despite being morphologically quite different from them. None of these species is widespread and some are likely to be rare and restricted.

Regenerative farming as climate action

Regenerative agriculture is an alternative approach to farming that has been gaining traction and interest among farmers due to its potential to reduce input costs, improve soil health, and increase the resilience of farming systems. This paper undertakes a practice-based analysis of farmers, applying a lens of regenerative agriculture. Surveys were developed as a part of a broader project using an established methodological framework. Topics were developed and adapted with input from local stakeholders before being mailed out to three farming regions across Australia (the Western Australian Wheatbelt, the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia and Central West New South Wales). The research clustered farmers into two groups: those who are using best-practices that fall inside the scope of regenerative agriculture, and those who are not. The similarities and differences in farmer attributes, as well as self-reported knowledge levels and information sources used by each group are explored. Results indicate that a belief in anthropogenic climate change may be one of the primary divides between the two groups, and therefore a possible driver of best-practice implementation. The findings provide insight into perceptions of regenerative agriculture for Australian farmers, and may assist with knowledge dissemination amongst those managing our environment.

A framework for modelling spatio-temporal trends in crop production using generalised additive models

Satellite imagery provides opportunities for inference of trends in crop production across space and time. However, the large size of these datasets has made application of statistical modelling approaches computationally difficult. Recent advances in computational techniques and infrastructure have allowed generalised additive models to be fitted to very large datasets. We propose a framework for inferring trends in crop production across space and time using generalised additive models which accounts for inter-annual trends (main effect of year), spatial distribution (main effect of space), crop ontogeny (main effect of month), inter-annual changes in seasonality (interaction between year and month), and inter-annual changes in spatial distribution (interaction between year and space). Application of the proposed model to farm scale, multi-field sites in the Ord River Irrigation Area, Western Australia, demonstrates that this approach is able to decompose variation into the aforementioned effects. Furthermore, comparison of grain production observations and estimates for the Western Australian Wheatbelt as ground-truth data showed agreement with inferences drawn from the proposed model, with prediction terms for the main effect of year positively correlated with estimated tonnes produced from 2013 to 2021 (p = 0.03). Finally, application to Madagascar, which has been experiencing a food crisis, revealed a decreasing trend in cropland Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from 2014 to 2021 of 2.5%, raising concerns about ongoing food security. The proposed modelling framework is adaptable to numerous agricultural research problems.

Two new Western Australian species related to Hibbertia priceana (Dilleniaceae)

Hibbertia priceana is a rare species found in two localised areas in southern south-western Western Australia, near Ongerup and in the vicinity of Wickepin and Harrismith. Two new species that are morphologically similar to H. priceana but are disjunct and distinct from it are described in this paper. Hibbertia hapalophylla is a new, potentially geographically restricted and rare species first collected during botanical surveys for a mining project near Mount Holland in the Western Australian Goldfields. It was initially collected from, and only known from, disturbed areas on an active mine site, but larger populations were subsequently discovered on a nearby sandplain, from where is was likely introduced to the mine site on sand transported for construction purposes. The second new species, Hibbertia remanens, appears to be restricted to small areas of remnant vegetation near Cunderdin and Kellerberrin in the Western Australian wheatbelt. The three species differ mainly in their leaf shapes in section, with H. priceana having flat leaves with the abaxial lamina fully exposed, H. remanens having recurved leaf margins with the abaxial shallowly grooved either side of the midrib, and H. hapalophylla having strongly revolute margins with the abaxial lamina surface concealed within lacunae formed between the margins and midrib.

'We country women need advocacy': Birthing narratives from the Western Australian Wheatbelt region.

This study describes the experiences of eight mothers from the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia who shared their stories of travelling and/or temporarily relocating for birth. The aim of this study was to describe rural and remote Western Australian mothers' experiences of travelling long distances and/or relocating to give birth. This study was based on Crotty's four elements of qualitative research. This study was underpinned by a constructivist epistemology, a feminist theoretical lens and a narrative approach using semistructured, story-based interviews. Participants narrated their stories of birthing away from home by telephone interview. Five major themes were identified utilising thematic analysis. These were (1) feeling forgotten in the system, (2) accessibility and choice, (3) compounded social isolation, (4) doing it hard: financial and logistical challenges and (5) building strength: advocating for myself and baby. Mothers' stories were reflective of current and historical failures of rural maternal health policy, including widespread closures of rural birthing hospitals. Mothers described the logistical barriers they faced with little support and suggested multiple solutions that would improve their experiences. Mothers faced significant obstacles which impeded their access to equitable maternal healthcare. This study highlights the complexities of birthing as a rural mother and the need to address maternal health inequities between rural and metropolitan women.

Food and movements of the Red-tailed Black Cockatoo Calyptorhynchus banksi escondidus in the Western Australian wheatbelt

ABSTRACT The diet and movements of a breeding population of the Red-tailed Black Cockatoo Calyptorhynchus banksi escondidus was studied between spring 1974 and the end of 1981 at Nereeno Hill in the northern wheatbelt of Western Australian. The birds fed almost exclusively on the seed of Double Gee Emex australis, an introduced, prolific, agricultural weed. When incubating and raising young nestlings, parents foraged within 5 km of their breeding area. However, once their nestlings were older, they often foraged more than 20 km from their nest hollows, commuting over an hour in the early morning and again in the evening. In doing so, they passed over available food, to join large, non-breeding, foraging flocks. Once the birds finished breeding they foraged widely in large flocks of over 1000 birds, up to 200 km from their breeding area. The dependence on the seed of an agricultural weed for food has allowed the birds to increase their distribution and abundance, but is a potential threat to the cockatoos, as any control measure that severely reduces the density of Double Gee may adversely impact on the distribution of the cockatoos in the southern part of their range.

Wool and the relative resilience of Western Australian Wheatbelt economies

AbstractThis article seeks to examine the path dependence and relative resilience of rural economies by focusing on the dynamics of the wool industry, a former mainstay of the economic base of many, if not most, Australian rural economies throughout most of the twentieth century. Based on a case study of the Western Australian Wheatbelt, a region in which broadacre cropping and Merino sheep grazing formed a cohesive farming enterprise type for many decades, we employ dynamic econometric models to test the relative resilience of the wool sector for four of the region’s constituent local government areas (LGAs) from just prior to the onset of the Second World War to the closing years of the twentieth century. The testing reveals evidence of both path dependence in the general model specification and a tendency for the four LGAs as a group to return to their long‐run developmental trajectories following a “shock.” However, divergence across the performance of the four LGAs suggests the persistence of historical and ecological gradients that require further investigation.

Aquatic invertebrate community structure and phenology of the intermittent treed swamps of the semi-arid Paroo lowlands in Australia.

The middle Paroo lowlands in semi-arid western New South Wales support numerous intermittent wetlands of various types. Differences between them are promoted by three ecological drivers: salinity, turbidity and hydroperiod. Community structure and phenology of the two most common types, saline lakes and claypans, are known but similar ecologies are lacking for the third most common wetland, the treed swamps. These are of six subtypes distinguished by dominant tree species, geomorphology and hydroperiod, all with similar community structure and phenology, but with differing invertebrate diversities. Summed diversity is not as high as in local creek pools, the shorter hydroperiods and simpler geomorphology of the treed swamps being restrictive so that there is almost no replacement of species during the early dominance of branchiopods and later of insects. Such treed swamps are uncommon in the semi-arid zone, but much more speciose treed swamps are known under similar and seasonally dry Mediterranean climates of the Western Australian Wheatbelt where hydroperiods are more stable.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11273-021-09846-0.

THE CYBERNETIC WHEATBELT

John Kinsella’s poetry returns again and again to the landscape of the Western Australian wheatbelt. The wheatbelt is a region that was suddenly and violently re-made by capital in the service of cereal and fibre production during the course of the twentieth century. Despite this radical repurposing of land and the wholesale eradication of an ancient biome, the new farming zone quickly took on the halo of a natural landscape within state and nationalist ideologies. Against the backdrop of this event, Kinsella’s wheatbelt can be viewed as a comprehensive deconstruction of the forces that have led the wheatbelt to where it is now and which still provide the material conditions of its existence. In this essay, Kinsella’s Divine Comedy: Journeys Through a Regional Geography (2008) is considered as exemplary of his wheatbelt poetry. The essay explores the basic conceits that animate Kinsella’s poetics of critique. It argues that Kinsella’s poetry offers a strategic intervention into the claims of “capitalist realism,” which is Mark Fisher’s term for the foreclosure of alternatives to profit-driven patterns of production and consumption. Capitalist realism, in the context of the wheatbelt, asserts that whether we like it or not, one cannot argue against the basic entitlement that productive imperatives (and its agents) have to use land as they see fit. This essay attempts to detail the kinds of ways that Kinsella’s poetry tries to fracture this claim to common sense that capitalist production monopolises. What it finds, somewhat counter-intuitively, is that Kinsella’s poetry draws together two things which are traditionally regarded as antinomies – the machine and the organism. In this respect, Kinsella’s poetry is distinctly different from conventional ecopoetry, which tends to uphold the distinction between an authentic nature and a corrupting technology. Kinsella’s Divine Comedy makes use of the tripartite layering of Dante’s eschatology to evolve new topologies of being in the wheatbelt, and indeed, being in the world. Further still, the essay makes the claim that Kinsella delivers us a “cybernetic wheatbelt,” which refigures nature as a communicative machine.

A dynamic model of optimal lime application for wheat production in Australia

Soil acidification due to crop removal and the use of acidifying fertilisers reduce land productivity in many agricultural systems worldwide. The most common remedy is to apply lime to the soil surface. An alternative approach is to incorporate lime into the sub‐soil. This is a more expensive option, but it substantially reduces the time required to reduce acidity in the sub‐soil horizons. This paper presents a dynamic optimisation model to determine optimal rates, frequency and methods of lime application for a wheat monoculture system in the northern part of the Western Australian wheatbelt. Results show that optimal application rates depend on rainfall levels and soil‐acidity conditions. The net present value of profit is not sensitive to the frequency of lime application. Incorporating lime into the sub‐soil increases the net present value of profit, but only by a small amount: two to four per cent in most scenarios modelled. In the process, sub‐soil lime application reduces both the optimal lime application rate and the time required for the soil pH to increase to a target level.

Effectiveness of dogs for detecting feral cat scats in wheatbelt reserves of Western Australia

Abstract Context Dogs are increasingly being used in conservation work to collect information on species abundance, distribution, occupancy and other biological measures. Monitoring feral cats through the use of detection dogs could provide a useful technique to complement existing feral cat survey and control methods. Aim To demonstrate and quantify the ability of trained detection dogs to reliably and efficiently detect feral cat scats when present in woodland conservation reserves in the Wheatbelt of Western Australia. Methods Cat scats were randomly placed into 466 1.5 ha (150 m × 100 m) quadrats in Tutanning Nature Reserve, Western Australia, and the location of the scat was recorded. Quadrats were then independently searched by dogs walking a central transect line and the locations of all scats detected were recorded, with the distance from the scat to the transect subsequently being calculated. Data collected allowed the relationship between distance from the transect and detection probability to be used to assist modelling of detection probabilities. Key results Dogs detected scats in 213 (55%) of 384 quadrats that were searched using a single transect line method. All indications of a find by the detector dogs were associated with a cat scat (no false indications). Detection probabilities for scats declined with distance from the transect line and with an increasing age of the scat. Simulations to investigate management options for cat control programs quantified effort required to detect cat scats under varying densities. Conclusion Dogs were highly efficient at detecting scats within the woodland environment of the Western Australian wheatbelt. The effort required to detect a scat was considerably higher when cat density was low. Implications On the basis of the detection probabilities derived from the present study, trained scat-detection dogs can be expected to efficiently search woodlands and find cat scats by using an effective sweep width of 100 m (50 m either side of a transect) when scats are fresh. Sweep widths need to be reduced significantly if it is important to locate scats that have been exposed to the elements for greater periods of time, or to search habitats where terrain and vegetation cover are more challenging.

A Western Australian Pastoral of Rust and Dust

Born in 1935 to a family of early and successful Western Australian squattocracy (squatter aristocracy), the celebrated mid-century novelist Randolph Stow’s early life in rural Geraldton exposed him to the political contexts surrounding Australian pastoralism, particularly the dispossession and racist treatment of the Yamatji and Wajarri people of the central Gascoyne region and associated environmental destruction.1 This article reads two of Stow’s pastoral poems in light of these tensions, following the work of Stow’s Geraldton countryman John Kinsella’s understanding of settler Australian pastoral as inevitably fraught, for instead of a blank arcadia, even in retreat the landscape is always occupied (“Contrary Rhetoric” 136).2 The most influential voice in contemporary Australia (if not international) criticism of the pastoral, Kinsella argues that environmental violence is inextricable from violence done to the occupants of the land as functions of colonization, and the pastoral as it primarily operates in an Australian context occludes this violence. Kinsella writes that the “hierarchy of land ownership, a concept imported from Europe in particular, has meant that no nostalgia, no return to an Eden, is possible. These Edens are about dispossession and ownership by the few” (“Is There an Australian Pastoral” 348). Yet, is this necessarily other to the pastoral, which traces one of its many origin points to Virgil’s dispossession from his ancestral property at Mantua following the 42BC battle of Phillipi?3 How might an understanding of the pastoral as social form—complex, communal, and political—better help unpack the work of Stow and others? In this article, I take this question as my central concern, revisiting the poetry of Stow, which has largely rested in a critical lacunae since his death in Harwich, UK, in 2010.4 I am interested in teasing out how the pastoral is intrinsically linked to citizenship and community, or as William Empson writes, “the problems of one and the many, especially their social aspects” (21). This is the rusted pastoral of the Western Australian Wheatbelt Stow offers us, one that, through the questioning of human communities, is porous, allowing nature, history, and politics to filter through.

Hotel Impossible

Hotel Impossible is the puzzle-world of global capital Pilgrim enters looking for comfort, discovering instead various trials and tribulations on his way through an unresolvable Hell of Whiteworld. As it spreads and occupies the planet, a super-charged colonialism of the now, there's a paddock in the Western Australian Wheatbelt where Sister is waiting, keeping life going as they knew it, but it was always a different kind of life, out of keeping with the conservative rural community around it, a community with its corruptions and invasiveness. Discovering purpose in resisting corruption, Pilgrim decodes his way through the hotel via CERN and Lake Geneva, arriving back ‘home’ to confront the offices of colonial mining corruption. Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress is a de-map in a world of constant remapping and overlays, and Escher and Penrose are clues to possible solutions, but in the end only the land itself and truths outside colonialism can offer any way through without ongoing acts of appropriation, cultural-theft, and the deceptions of ‘fictionalising’ reality.

Birds respond to woodland type, soil and mesic gradients in heterogeneous woodlands at Dryandra

The vast clearance of forest and woodland for agriculture with the removal of more than 93% of the native vegetation has decimated the fauna of what is now known as the Western Australian wheatbelt. This clearing has been particularly severe on wandoo woodlands through the wheatbelt. In order to quantify the usefulness of what has been left, three native woodland types were surveyed for avian abundance and diversity, in a large heterogeneous remnant of old-growth woodland, at Dryandra. Birds were counted at 70 points along seven transects, through three woodland types: powderbark wandoo (Eucalyptus accedens), wandoo (E. wandoo) and a brown mallet (E. astringens) plantation. Greater abundance and species richness were detected in E. wandoo woodland, although this is thought to be related to the more mesic and productive low-lying contours of the landscape on which it is situated.

Agricultural Dust Exposures and Health and Safety Practices among Western Australian Wheatbelt Farmers during Harvest.

Background: Agricultural farmworkers are routinely exposed to high levels of airborne dust particles that have been linked to adverse health outcomes. Methods: This study measured personal and environmental exposures to dust particulates by farmworkers during harvesting activities. Farmers completed a workplace survey with regards to their health and safety awareness and practices and researchers observed general farm safety practices on selected farms using a checklist. Results: In this study, farmers were noted to commonly work extended hours and shifts during harvest due to rigid timing deadlines. Results showed that 40% of farmers were exposed to concentrations of inhalable particles greater than SafeWork Australia’s workplace exposure standards for grain dusts, assuming a 16 h working day over 5 shifts. Twenty-two percent were exposed to concentrations that were above the adjusted standard for 12 h shifts. Survey results showed that three-quarters of farm owners provided new workers with some type of induction related to farm safety, however this was mostly undertaken in an arbitrary manner. Despite noting that farming was a dusty occupation and reporting to use protective measures to reduce harmful dust exposures, no workers were observed to wear respiratory protection when working outside of the protection of a vehicle cabin. Conclusion: This study identified substantial gaps in health and safety knowledge among farm managers and workers, and improved education and training are highly recommended.

Identification of a remnant population of the black-flanked rock-wallaby (Petrogale lateralis lateralis) in Kalbarri National Park, Western Australia, and implications for its management

Black-flanked rock-wallabies (Petrogale lateralis lateralis) were thought to be locally extinct in Kalbarri National Park, Western Australia, until 2015 when a pair were photographed in the Murchison River gorge. Subsequent searches failed to locate any other populations and, in combination with previous surveys, suggest that these animals were the sole survivors of a formerly abundant population. Efforts to capture the rock-wallabies to obtain tissue samples and ascertain their genetic affinities were unsuccessful. However, fresh faecal material was collected and a ~600-bp fragment of DNA sequence data was obtained from a mitochondrial DNA gene. The Kalbarri rock-wallabies were found to be genetically distinct from all other sampled populations of P. l. lateralis. They were genetically most similar to rock-wallabies in the Calvert Range, 950km to the north-east in the Little Sandy Desert. Nearer populations in Cape Range (600km north) and the Western Australian Wheatbelt (500km south-east) were less closely related. Following evaluation of a variety of factors, including population size, genetics, demography, ecology, environment and logistics, a decision was made to supplement the Kalbarri National Park population with females sourced from the Western Australian Wheatbelt. In May 2016 three females were released at the same site as the Kalbarri pair to try to ensure the survival of the population whilst still preserving unique Kalbarri alleles.

Settlers of the Marsh: settler desire and its vicissitudes

ABSTRACTFrederick Philip Grove’s Settlers of the Marsh (1925) is a settler-colonial farm novel. Grove’s novel is an exemplary Canadian instance of a mode of fiction which attended the ‘settler revolution’ – the agricultural colonisation of temperate range lands in North and South America, Eurasia, Australasia and Southern Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth. The defining feature of this iconic form of settler colonialism was the presence of what the Canadian historian Peter A. Russell terms a ‘large scale open land frontier’. The settler farm – whether it was in the South African High Veld, the Western Australian wheatbelt, the prairies of Manitoba or the Canterbury Plains of New Zealand – was the main instrument in a mode of colonisation in which seized indigenous land was made available to mainly European immigrants for agricultural enterprise. In the literary sphere, the particular aura and ideological valency of the pioneer farm find expression in the appearance of novels that dramatise the taking up of land by settlers in these frontier communities. This essay uses Grove’s Settlers of the Marsh to trace how the particular forms of desire mobilised by settler colonialism are modulated in the settler-colonial farm novel.

Local government perspectives on rural retirement migration and social sustainability

ABSTRACTWithin the policy and academic literature, the impact of rural retirement migration (RRM) on community sustainability has been questioned. This qualitative study investigated the perceived impact of retirement migration on rural social sustainability from a local government perspective. Focus groups were conducted with local government senior managers and community services staff (n = 39) across six rural local government areas in one Australian state. Data were analysed against the three components of rural social sustainability (equity, community and rurality) proposed by Jones and Tonts [1995. “Rural Restructuring and Social Sustainability: Some Reflections on the Western Australian Wheatbelt.” Australian Geographer 26: 133–140]. While RRM is perceived to benefit rural community capacity to facilitate or maintain equity, community and rurality, it also presents challenges for local government. Participants suggested that capacity to facilitate equity, community and rurality in contexts of RRM was impacted by uncertainty around future impacts of RRM on population ageing, increasing advocacy and expectations of older in-migrants, and the impact of RRM on rural heterogeneity. These issues required local governments to think critically about how to accommodate and manage the needs and expectations of older in-migrants, while mediating potential impacts associated with RRM.

Draft Genome Sequences of Streptomyces sp. Strains MH60 and 111WW2

ABSTRACTWe report here the draft genome sequences, annotations, and predictions of secondary metabolite gene clusters of two endophytic Streptomyces species isolated from wheat plants growing in the Western Australian wheat belt. These strains, Streptomyces sp. strains MH60 and 111WW2, possess antifungal and/or plant growth-promoting activities.

Motivations and barriers for Western Australian broad-acre farmers to adopt carbon farming

Carbon farming policies aim to contribute to climate change mitigation, but their success strongly depends on whether landholders actually adopt desired practices or participate in offered programs. The Australian Government’s Carbon Farming Initiative and Emissions Reduction Fund policies were designed to incentivise the adoption of carbon farming practices. Although these policies have been active since December 2011, farmer engagement has been limited, and net emissions reductions low as a result. We surveyed broad-acre farmers in the Western Australian wheatbelt to explore their drivers and barriers to adopting carbon farming practices and participating in carbon farming policy programs. Drivers of adoption included knowledge and perception of co-benefits (for yield, productivity, and the environment), knowing another adopter, and believing that changes to farm management are an appropriate method to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Barriers to adoption included lack of information, uncertainty and costs. The key barrier to participation was policy and political uncertainty. The determinants of adoption and participation that we identify in our study offer important insights into how to best ensure the success of Australia’s land sector-based climate change policies. We conclude that, to increase landholder engagement, the co-benefits and climate change benefits of carbon farming practices must be actively promoted, and additional information is needed about the costs associated with adoption. Information diffusion is best achieved if it actively leverages landholder social networks. Finally, our results indicate that landholder buy-in to carbon farming could be greatly enhanced by achieving more continuity in Australian climate change policies and politics.