 |
 |
 |
| The steep volcanic cones of Mount Fraser (left) and Bald Hill rise from Victoria's basalt plain, with the towers of central Melbourne just visible in the distance (far right). |
|
|
| Photo by Mike Daffey, 2000. |
|
 |
|
| A hint of what the plain might have looked like in Spring before Europeans arrived with their stock and cereal crops. |
|
|
| Photo by John Seebeck for Department of Natural Resources and Environment, State Government of Victoria. |
|
|
|
Victoria's basalt plain was created only yesterday in geological time, by lava spewed from the vents of hundreds of volcanoes across what geologists call Australia's Newer Volcanics Province.
This Province covers approximately 15,000 square kilometres of south-eastern Australia. Its lava flows extend about 400 kilometres west from Melbourne to Mount Gambier, just beyond the South Australian border, defining a unique bioregion, one of 21 within the state of Victoria, Australia. (See also Strategic Overview for the Victorian Volcanic Plain - May, 2003, and the Australian Natural Resource Atlas Biodiversity Audit of the plain.)
Municipalities partly or entirely within this bioregion include Brimbank, Colac-Otway, Corangamite, Darebin, Glenelg, Golden Plains,Greater Geelong, Hobsons Bay, Hume, Maribyrnong, Melbourne, Melton, Moonee Valley, Moorabool, Moreland, Moyne, Southern Grampians, and Wyndham.
About 400 separate eruption points have been identified on the basalt plain. Most of these volcanoes erupted between 4.5 and 2 million years ago, but some are far younger. These more recent eruptions would certainly have been witnessed by the first peoples and may have disrupted their lives considerably. Mount Schanck, just across Victoria's border with South Australia, erupted only 4000 years ago if current dating is correct, while Mount Napier, near Hamilton in Victoria's Western District, last erupted about 7200 years ago. Both these volcanoes are considered dormant rather than extinct.
For many thousands of years, the first peoples managed the fertile volcanic soils in a way that favoured the growth of grassland and open woodland habitats, which European invaders were quick to exploit. When Major Mitchell, Surveyor-General of the colony of New South Wales, climbed several volcanic cones in 1836 and gazed across the plain before him, he quite correctly predicted that this 'champagne country', as he called it, would be a source of great pastoral, agricultural and industrial wealth. He failed, however, to foresee the ecological damage such 'progress' would also bring.
 |
|
| Basalt rocks smudged with lichen in a coastal rockpool at Altona, a suburb of Melbourne on Port Phillip Bay, where the lava flows meet the sea. |
|
|
| Photo by Merrill Findlay 1996. |
|
What are your stories about the basalt plain?
Copyright Imagine The Future Inc. and Australian Film Commission, 2002.
Text by Merrill Findlay for ITF.
Home
|
