Melbourne’s east may be leafy, but these parts of the west have more green space

Rick Van Keulen lies in the middle of 34-hectare native grasslands in Melbourne’s west he has been taking care of for more than 20 years.

The grasses shift in the breeze, golden billy buttons, basalt daisies and button wrinkleworts bloom in the first flush of the season’s wildflowers, while a tiny, fat-bellied cisticola dives into its nest nearby in thick dianella grass.

Despite enormous industrial areas, and seemingly endless housing estates, open grasslands such as the Iramoo Wildflower Grassland Reserve in St Albans give Melbourne’s west more green open space per person than many other parts of the city, according to new research.

Victoria University’s Mitchell Institute used satellite technology to find that the west has a high percentage of shrubland and native grassland, a distinct ecosystem tied to the region’s drier climate and volcanic plains, rather than the tree canopy found in the east.

The research findings are in stark contrast to the lowest levels of shared green urban spaces found in inner eastern and inner south-eastern suburbs, such as Glen Huntly, Carnegie and Bentleigh East. Conversely, areas in the west, such as those around the Maribyrnong River, score highly for accessible green space per person, averaging more than 72 square metres.

But the west’s grass and wildflower reserves are at risk. Earlier this year, The Age reported a landowner in Mount Cottrell intentionally destroyed about 40 hectares of protected native grassland earmarked for state purchase for the Western Grasslands Reserve.

Victoria University researchers have also challenged the focus on tree-planting with calls to direct more efforts into protecting and integrating grasslands.

The Age is strengthening its focus on Melbourne’s booming west with a special series examining the positives and challenges the region faces. In October, our reporters will moderate a West of Melbourne Economic Development Alliance’s (WoMEDA) summit to discuss a vision for the western suburbs’ success. The alliance of university, industry, community and local government experts works to unlock the west’s economic potential.

Victoria University report’s lead researcher, Dr Bo Klepac, said the analysis showed the vast difference in the physical environment between Melbourne’s west and east. She said that “we need to make sure our planning and policy approaches respond to that uniqueness”.

Klepac, a senior research fellow at the Mitchell Institute, said grasslands were “probably unloved compared to leafy areas”, because people “often equate ‘green’ with trees and shade, so grasslands can seem bare, especially when they turn brown or orange in summer, which is actually part of their natural cycle”. This meant the critically endangered grasslands were often overlooked or sacrificed for development.

“Those grassy plains are anything but ‘plain’ – they carry deep cultural knowledge and history,” she said.

Volunteers who have dedicated their lives to these shimmering grasslands feel this value keenly.

Van Keulen, who manages the Iramoo Wildflower Grassland Reserve on the Victoria University St Albans campus, said his 20 years of work was about giving back to the Wurundjeri people, to restore what they had looked after for thousands of years.

“This grassland is 125 million years old,” he said. Van Keulen, 68, has rescued endangered plants and seeds from areas of the west before they were bulldozed for infrastructure and housing. He has raised them to plants behind the fences at Iramoo. (Iramoo means “grassy plains” in the Woiwurrung language, and the site was once a munitions factory.)

His work has also included a decades-long battle against noxious weeds such as the South American serrated tussock. Van Keulen, who once had 60 wool bales of the noxious weed to burn, said the “coverage of [serrated] tussock from 90 per cent is now 10 per cent, over 20 years”.

“I just can’t stop [the work],” he said.

The rewards are in the recovery of rare species. In the Iramoo reserve, a striped legless lizard population thrives, thousands of wildflowers bloom and raptors hunt small animals in waist-high grasses.

Fellow volunteer Paul Codognotto, a 38-year-old tattooist, comes to Iramoo once a week.

“It’s like going to church every week. It’s like a reset for a week, touching the grass,” Codognotto said. “The open spaces ... there’s something healthy about being in an open area and seeing a horizon.”

Van Keulen is critical of mass tree-planting initiatives which try to remedy the disparity in tree canopy coverage on the opposing sides of the city, arguing such projects are often misguided and can damage the west’s ecosystem.

“There are more trees on the western plains now than there were 125 million years ago,” he said.

Klepac agreed, and said planning in the west had to be nuanced and focus on protecting grassy plains and planting trees – but in the right places.

“Protect and restore native grasslands and grow and maintain tree canopy where people live, walk and wait [like] streets, schools, transport stops, parks to cut heat,” she suggested.

She said new trees should be planted in urbanised areas.

Klepac said strong measures should be taken to shield the most vulnerable sites from development, starting with legal protection for the best grassland patches, or adding them to the Western Grassland Reserve. The reserve, established in 2009, is an incomplete project. The Victorian government has acquired only about 26 per cent of the land from private owners.

For new housing developments, Klepac suggested designers should protect grassland remnants with buffers and link them to open-space corridors.

“For the rest of the landscaping – nature strips, park edges – [planners should] use local grasses and wildflowers, so the area still feels like the west, not just a copy of the leafy east,” she said.

She also encouraged residents to become good grassland neighbours by joining volunteer groups such as Friends of Iramoo and Friends of Kororoit Creek, or to include native grassland plants such as kangaroo grass in their own gardens.

Van Keulen called for increased funding to encourage more people to pick up his work.

“If you just think it is just a grassland, well, you’re going to lose it to development,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Victorian government said it had planted half a million trees in the west and was planting half a million more across low-canopy areas of Melbourne.

This was “creating greener, leafier streets, which makes suburbs cooler and better to live in,” they said.

The spokesperson said the government had secured more than 4000 hectares of the Western Grasslands Reserve to help threatened species thrive.

“This is funded by the MSA [Melbourne Strategic Assessment] levy, which is paid by developers and therefore proceeds in line with the rate of development in the growth areas,” they said.

“We’re working with Arthur Rylah Institute, local councils and other agencies to monitor the effectiveness of management works in these areas, including invasive weed control and ecological burning.”

The West of Melbourne Summit, presented by WoMEDA with The Age, will be held on October 22-23. womeda.com.au

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