IPHA FIELD DAY AT YARRAWA HALL 22.11.2025

Report by Pat Collins

Our recent field day in NSW was held in the Upper Hunter Valley at the Yarrawa Hall. This Hall was bequeathed to myself in 2024 by Bev Button (Hicks) and she asked if I’d use it as a place for learning. This was the first workshop I have run at the hall, and I know Bev would have been very pleased.

Some of the attendees arrived the night before and set up their tents and vans in the backyard with some sleeping in the Hall. The day started with a smoking ceremony by Natasha and her elders from the local Wanaruah community.

Then in my introduction I spoke about the history of the Hall, what we were doing today and the plants we would put into our garden, as well as information on IPHA. This was followed by morning tea where we enjoyed some tasty lemon myrtle and ginger tea and some of my Anzac biscuits that contained macadamia nuts and crushed bunya meal.

Natasha Kellet from the Wanaruah community spoke on reviving Indigenous survival practices and showed products she had made. She had string from stringy bark and kurrajong, woven baskets from matt rush, wooden objects made from various trees such as bowls of various sizes. She talked about bush medicine and the plants she
used, tanning skins with wattle bark and so much more. Everyone enjoyed her talk.

After a tasty lunch based on kangaroo meat balls or lentil balls with flat bread and salad we had our next guest speaker Paul Melehan. Paul is the local Landcare co-ordinator and has his own nursery at Muswellbrook. He had collected many local plants and was a wealth of information. He also talked about the plants that were going
into our native garden – and brought along extras so everyone could take home a native plant.

At the end of the day we made a rockery, native garden and two water features. We had a ute full of soil, lots of hay and a range of large and slightly smaller rocks. We covered the area in weed mat then made our rockery. Some of the rocks weighed a ton but some of our keen gardeners lugged them into position.

Then on goes the soil followed by the plants. In the centre we had some native pennyroyal and in the next
layers we had a creeping boobialla, flax lily, kangaroo apple, saltbush, kangaroo paw, red wings Grevillea, midyim berry and so many more.

In our water features we planted several rushes, a variegated water celery, water chestnuts, swamp mazus, bulrush
and more. We also planted other trees in the garden such as Kunzea, riberry, lemon myrtle, various wattles, Illawarra plum and a tuckeroo.

We finished off tasting some jams I’d made from local berries and fruits on pikelets with cream. Yummo. Everyone took their native plant and a head full of informat Iion and a belly full of good food.


Thank you to all the participants especially those that helped with the food – and a special thank you to Natasha and her elders and Paul who filled our heads with a hundred botanical names. A big thankyou to my fellow IPHA committee member Reesa for her invaluable help before, during and after the event.

To find out more about IPHA events, resources and knowledge sharing, consider joining the IPHA.