Framlingham Forest Indigenous Protected Area: Mapping the Savannah Woodlands of Victoria

Framlingham Forest IPA is best known for being the largest surviving remnant of stringybark and manna gum savannah woodland in its part of western Victoria, an ecological feature that has largely disappeared from the surrounding agricultural landscape. It is equally known as a landmark in Australian Aboriginal land rights, having been returned to traditional owners through 1987 Commonwealth legislation after a community blockade in 1979 and a long political struggle. The protected area is also recognised for its layered cultural significance: it was carved out of the historical Framlingham Aboriginal Reserve, established in 1861, and remains a homeland and ceremonial country for the Kirrae Wuurong, Djargurd Wurrung and Gunditjmara descendants associated with the reserve. Together, these ecological and historical qualities make the IPA an unusually vivid example of conservation being driven by Aboriginal ownership rather than imposed on it.

The history of Framlingham Forest IPA is bound up with the long and contested history of the Framlingham Aboriginal Reserve. European settlement in the Hopkins River valley began around 1840, with the Brefnay Hotel, a store and a Presbyterian church established over the following decades. The area was rapidly cleared for dairy farming and grazing, displacing and reshaping the landscape that had supported Kirrae Wuurong life for many generations.

In 1861 the Church of England in Warrnambool obtained some 1,416 hectares of land for an Aboriginal mission, and the Victorian Board for the Protection of Aborigines formally established the Framlingham Aboriginal Reserve in response. From 1865, surviving Kirrae Wuurong people, along with some Djargurd Wurrung and Gunditjmara families, were settled on the reserve beside the Hopkins River. Despite repeated attempts by the Board and local residents to close or shrink the reserve, the Kirrae Wuurong successfully resisted relocation in 1868 and the community remained.

In the 1890s the reserve was reduced to a small fraction of its original size, and most of the excised land was reallocated as State Forest, now known as Framlingham State Forest. The reserve itself continued under Aboriginal occupation until 1916, when the Victorian Government attempted to concentrate Aboriginal Victorians at the Lake Tyers Mission in Gippsland. Some residents were permitted to remain, and from the 1930s public concern about their conditions prompted the construction of additional housing, a school and improved provisions from the government.

The modern era of land rights began with the abolition of the Board for the Protection of Aborigines in 1957 and the passage of Victoria's Aboriginal Lands Act 1970. On 1 July 1971 ownership of the residual reserve was transferred to the Framlingham Aboriginal Trust, making Framlingham one of the last Aboriginal reserves to close in Victoria. In 1976 the community launched a campaign to recover the forest that had been excised in the 1890s, and in April 1979 community members blockaded the road to the forest's picnic ground. The Victorian Government's compromise offer of Aboriginal management over continued crown land was rejected, and the blockade resumed.

In 1987 the Commonwealth Parliament passed the Aboriginal Land (Lake Condah and Framlingham Forest) Act 1987, returning 1,130 acres of the Framlingham State Forest to the Aboriginal trust on essentially inalienable title. In 2009 this returned forest was formally dedicated as an Indigenous Protected Area, consolidating Aboriginal ownership and conservation management under what is now the Kirrae Whurrong Aboriginal Corporation.

The IPA lies on the inland side of Victoria's south-west coast, in the gently undulating country between the Hopkins River and the small township of Framlingham. The river corridor itself runs through parts of the landscape, with alluvial flats and low rises giving way to the broader plains of the Western District that sweep west to Warrnambool and the Southern Ocean.

Within this cleared agricultural setting, the IPA forms a distinct block of native bushland, an irregular patch of open woodland rising out of surrounding pasture. Its terrain is undulating rather than steep, more typical of inland western Victoria than of the rugged coast further south. Grassy tracks, former logging-era roads and the Hopkins River corridor shape the visual texture of the protected area.

The dominant vegetation of Framlingham Forest IPA is an open eucalypt savannah, in which widely spaced mature stringybark trees and manna gum eucalypts stand above a native grass and herb understorey. This savannah structure once characterised much of the inland Hopkins River country, but extensive clearing for dairy and sheep farming during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reduced such woodland to small, scattered remnants. The IPA is therefore ecologically significant not only for what it contains but for what it represents of a largely vanished regional vegetation type.

The protection of this woodland mosaic supports the habitat requirements of a wide range of native birds, mammals, reptiles and insects that depend on mature hollow-bearing eucalypts and intact grassy understorey. The IPA's conservation management, guided by Aboriginal traditional owners, is framed around maintaining this open savannah character rather than allowing it to thicken into closed forest or be further reduced by clearing or grazing pressure.

As a substantial remnant of stringybark and manna gum savannah in an otherwise heavily cleared district, the IPA provides habitat for the typical suite of south-west Victorian woodland species. Mature hollow-bearing eucalypts within the forest support parrots, cockatoos and other cavity-nesting birds, while the grassy understorey provides foraging and shelter for small ground-dwelling mammals, reptiles and invertebrates. The protected area is therefore of regional importance for the persistence of woodland-dependent fauna in an agricultural matrix where such habitat is otherwise scarce.

Framlingham Forest IPA is the largest surviving remnant of its native forest type in the surrounding Western District, giving it strong conservation value simply by virtue of its size and condition in a largely cleared landscape. The IPA designation, conferred in 2009, formalises long-term protection of the forest under Aboriginal-led management and places it within Australia's national network of Indigenous Protected Areas, which are recognised as a significant component of the country's conservation estate.

The IPA's conservation importance is sharpened by its origin: the forest was returned to Aboriginal ownership through the 1987 Commonwealth land legislation, and its ongoing protection is administered by the Kirrae Whurrong Aboriginal Corporation rather than by a government agency. This makes the IPA a notable example of conservation outcomes being achieved through Indigenous land ownership and traditional ecological knowledge, anchored in the cultural obligation of traditional owners to care for country.

The IPA is inseparable from the cultural history of the Kirrae Wuurong people and the wider Aboriginal community of the Framlingham reserve. The reserve was established in 1861 in response to Anglican and government concern about the conditions of Aboriginal people displaced by pastoral and agricultural settlement, and from 1865 it became home to surviving members of the Kirrae Wuurong clans, along with Djargurd Wurrung and Gunditjmara families. Among those associated with the reserve were the Kirrae Wuurong leader Kaawirn Kuunawarn (King David), who lived at Framlingham from 1865 until 1889, and later residents such as Collin and Nora Hood and singer-songwriter Archie Roach in his early childhood.

The decades-long struggle to recover the excised forest, including the 1979 road blockade and the community's rejection of half-measures, makes the IPA a landmark in Victorian Aboriginal land rights. Today the formally recognised traditional owners of the broader area are groups within the Eastern Maar peoples, represented by the Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation, and the IPA is governed through the Kirrae Whurrong Aboriginal Corporation and Framlingham Aboriginal Trust as a continuing expression of Aboriginal custodianship of country.

At roughly 1,130 hectares, Framlingham Forest IPA is the largest surviving remnant of stringybark and manna gum savannah in its part of western Victoria, standing out as a major patch of native bush in a largely cleared pastoral landscape. It is simultaneously one of Australia's more prominent examples of an Indigenous Protected Area arising directly from a land-rights campaign, with the 1987 Commonwealth return of the forest and the 2009 IPA dedication marking two key milestones.

The forest's layered identity, Aboriginal reserve, mission, state forest, returned Aboriginal land and now IPA, makes it unusually rich in both ecological and cultural meaning, and a reference point for understanding how Aboriginal ownership and conservation can be pursued together rather than as separate agendas.

Framlingham Forest sits in a temperate part of south-western Victoria, where autumn, winter and spring generally bring cooler temperatures, regular rainfall and greener understorey conditions, while summer can be warm and dry with elevated bushfire risk, as demonstrated by the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires that began near the forest. Visits during the cooler and wetter months typically offer more comfortable walking conditions and a more vivid display of native grasses and wildflowers in the savannah understorey, though the woodland character of the forest itself remains constant throughout the year. Given the protected area's cultural significance, visitors are encouraged to approach it respectfully and to follow guidance from the managing Aboriginal organisations regarding access and appropriate behaviour on country.