Mount Evelyn
Tuesday, 13 June, 2023
Capital works projects throughout Yarra Valley
Charges against Lilydale local and boxer dropped
Two years from June 2021 storm weather event
2022 Photographic Prize goes on show
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A Star News Group Publication
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Modern take on a classic Coldstream local Bruce Rowland composed The Man from Snowy River soundtrack in 1982 for the featurelength film of the same name. He will see his music played live to the film for the first time by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra later in August this year. In preparation for the event, Rowland and his team have spent months digitising the original score, converting the music to a digital format for use by the orchestra. Turn to page 15 for more
Coldstream resident Bruce Rowland and “The Man from Snowy River” composer will see his music played live to the film for the first time by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra later in August this year. Picture: TANYA STEELE
Kanga fears met form a working group called Save the Kinley Kangas (STKK), which has since been reorganised as the Victorian Kangaroo Alliance (VKA). A statement from the VKA stated a soft release proposal from the group’s experts was submitted to Intrapac Property, but was abandoned in favour of Mr Coulson’s plan. “We predicted a terrible outcome because of this experiment’s methodology, and sadly our fears have been realised,” VKA president AlyssaWormald said. “Kinley was an opportunity to document the known benefits of soft release, and we are devastated that instead the kangaroos were subjected to stress, suffering and death that we believe was largely avoidable,” Ms Wormald said.
“I was shocked that the alternative of soft release was not even mentioned in the presentation.” Dr Coulson said the soft release method of keeping the kangaroos in a holding yard at the release site before their hard release was considered by the university’s ethics committee, but was ruled out due to the potential risk of the animals contracting a serious stressinduced disease called capture myopathy. “We were approached by the developer.... and then we put together a team of people, partly from the uni, but also outside, and that gave us the people we needed to do the capture, the transport and the monitoring,” Dr Coulson said. Continued page 2
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Just over a third of kangaroos relocated from a development site in Lilydale have survived after being released into Warramate Hills Nature Conservation Reserve in Gruyere. Around 40 Eastern Grey Kangaroos who made the Kinley Estate site home were moved to make way for the build, with developers Intrapac Property reaching out to Melbourne University School of BioSciences Associate Professor Graeme Coulson to lead a translocation study. At an Arthur Rylah InstItute presentation on 22 May, Dr Coulson revealed that soon after the kangaroos’ release in August 2021, three had drowned in the Woori Yallock
Creek, with others falling victim to fences, gun shots and road crashes in the months following. The survival rate in the first year was just 41-47 per cent, and now only 38 per cent of the group remain alive, Dr Coulson said. “By the end of the first year, at least half of them had left the site and they’ve gone some very big distances in some cases...one of them has gone 25 kilometres,” Dr Coulson said. “Three... we don’t know what happened to them, they’re simply missing. If we counted those as also dead, the survival would be poorer.” After community outcry in 2020 when it was revealed the kangaroos would be shot, veterinarians and wildlife experts came together to
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By Tyler Wright