Over 20 students from Melbourne University's School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences heard differing viewpoints from Phil Kinghorn and Gib Wettenhall on high or low silviculture of the biorich plantings.  Senior Research Fellow Dr Lauren Bennett said later: "There was lively discussion on the return bus about the various issues that were raised, including comments on how instructive it was to see the reality of restoration practices, and how enjoyable the visit had been overall."

We just fled the hilltop in time as the wind rose and the rain fell. It was the day an extreme weather event caused massive outages in South Australia. Lauren concluded: "there were also comments on how well you (we) managed the weather (these admittedly made later as the rain set in)."

MU hopes to repeat the visit in coming years.

It's been a very wet early spring. The 'footy field' has reverted to a swamp. What few plants survived from last October planting day are now underwater (see bottom right). We'd better stick to reeds.

Some 40 Gordon TAFE students from Geelong visited the ImLal site in August. After background from Stephen Murphy, Phil Kinghorn handed out pruning tools so the Conservation and Land Management students could gain some practical experience of an essential silvicultural skill. And it proved good vigorous exercise for a typically cold winter's day at ImLal.