Conservation Volunteers Australia—Who, What, Where

Jumping back to the 8th, 9th and 10th of August (yea, I know a month and a half ago) I went with a group of people from AustraLearn to participate in Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA). To say that we didn’t know what we were doing is an understatement; we didn’t even know where we were going to do this conserving. All we knew was that we needed a pair of good shoes and a sleeping bag and to meet at the CVA office in Melbourne at 9 in the morning. On arrival we found out we were heading to ‘the island,’ this too was an understatement because ‘the island’ is actually just outside Ballarat—a town a good 70 minutes from any water source large enough to contain an island. We were going to plant seedlings in hopes of creating forest on farmland brought by the government to link up existing forestland. As we traveled out we found civilization slipping away and we were greeted by rolling hills and a growing mountain ranges. Being in the water-locked side of the Great Divide the soil is still brown everywhere, but I would still have called this the outback compared to the cosmopolitan life we’d been living for the previous month. As we pulled up at ‘the island’ (in reality a strip of land bordered on one side by a pitiful stream and gorge on the other) it came apparent why AustraLearn provided this opportunity to us pretty much free of charge—to experience life outside the city. An energetic badger came up to our minibus (no, that’s a persons name—not the largest relative to the weasel) to describe exactly what we were doing. As we stepped out we realized that north of Melbourne was (if it was possible in Australia) even colder than actual Melbourne. Shivering—yes it really was that cold—we got to know the basics. The basics: step one) dig a small hole, step two) place seedling and secure and step three) create a guard (biodegradable rectangular paper shields supported by two bamboo sticks) and place around seedling. The trees we were planting were all native to Australia, so that they’d make authentic forestland when they fully matured. We’d be working on a stretch right near the end of ‘the island’, on a downhill piece of land. Oh, and there were wild kangaroos on ‘the island’. This was going to be a cool weekend (physically cold yes, but also enjoyable and we could save the environment after killing it traveling from the states).