Whitehorse News - February 2022

Tony Slater is a curious life-long learner and a passionate advocate for nature. He credits his father – a dairy farmer who loved animals – for his own passion for nature.

“In high school I did Biology and loved it,” Tony reveals. “My first degree majored in Botany and Zoology so it could’ve gone either way. My passion is for living things” His masters’ degree in reproductive biology launched his career, firstly in native orchids, then wildflowers. Tony has travelled for work from Tasmania to Cape York in Australia, and as far as Europe including the Arctic Circle and Romania. “Nature is just fascinating – it’s the way that plants and animals interact and are interdependent on each other.”

Tony volunteers for Council’s Gardens for Wildlife and Environmental Education programs to give back to his community. During lockdown, he wrote the Guide to the Eucalypts of Whitehorse as a way to keep learning and share his knowledge when he couldn’t volunteer. “When I worked with cut flowers, I got to know the wildflowers, right up to a few acacia and eucalypts that were used for those purposes. But I didn’t know the eucalypts.

Because I do have a degree of knowledge most people don’t have, hopefully [the guide] will interest them to learn about them as well and appreciate them.”

The 40-page guide includes 18 Indigenous eucalypt species and 20 non-Indigenous; a go-to guide for Whitehorse residents. Tony’s idea for the guide developed after a few conversations with Belinda Moody, Tree Education Officer for Council’s City Planning and Development team. She supported the need for a eucalypt guide that covers species in the municipality. “There are some wonderful guides to eucalypts of Victoria or of the south-east of Australia,” Belinda says. “But we were lacking a guide that focuses on our local area.”

During the writing process in lockdown, Tony received help from Belinda and Council’s arborists. Plus, Tony was within five kilometres from Blackburn Lake and Dandenong Creek among other reserves which helped develop the guide. “I could go out testing the guide. The key was re written a number of times [to include] characteristics that are around for most of the year – buds, nuts, bark – to make it useful for most of the year.”

So how can residents learn about eucalypts at ground level? “Learn one a day,” Tony suggests. “If people can learn what’s the eucalypt at the moment that’s losing its bark and showing nice orange new bark then those people will be helped.”

Download the guide at
www.whitehorse.vic.gov.au/eucalypts-whitehorse