Over recent years many COG members have enjoyed the Spring
Forest property of Ross McInerney. It has many associations. One of
only two reasons why the hamlet of Koorawatha appears in The Oxford Literary
Guide to Australia is that: “Ross McInerney, eponymous farmer of
Geoffrey Lehmann’s Ross’ Poems (1978) lives here at Spring Farm.”
Sadly, the house is untenanted at the moment. Under
the shady trees at the back a number of nesting boxes have been attached to the
fence posts. They resemble the boxes on posts found in parts of the
eastern US to enable bluebirds to nest somewhere that starlings cannot
enter. I suppose, really only a guess, that they were intended for
grass-finches. John Goldie tells me that on one visit he found Ross surrounded
by a host of finches that he was feeding. I didn’t know finches nested in
such things, but one of the several well-informed finch-keepers on this
chatline will no doubt know all about this.
There are certainly a few finches still inhabiting the
derelict garden, more than a dozen red-brows, mainly juvs, and a few
double-bars. The below snaps were all taken there, except for the diamond
firetail, which preferred the open woodland about 1km away behind our camp.
