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| Many of the saltwater wetlands on and around Victoria's basalt plain are protected under the Ramsar Convention because they provide seasonal resting places for migratory waders. |
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| Digital composite by Csaba Szamosy for Imagine The Future Inc, 1996, created from photographs by Mark Trengove (Geelong Indigenous Nursery), Patrick O'Callahan (Marine Discovery Centre), Parks Victoria, and Merrill Findlay (ITF). |
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| Culturally significant Kulin shell midden at Point Lillias, on Port Phillip Bay, near Werribee. Point Lillias is also an important seasonal habitat for one of Australia's most endangered species, the Orange Bellied Parrot. |
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| Photo by Mark Trengove, Geelong Indigenous Nursery. |
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The diverse communities of organisms that inhabit the estuaries, coastal lagoons, sand spits, inter-tidal mudflats, mud islands, beaches, seagrass beds, saltmarshes,rock pools, lagoons and extensive man-made ponds of the coastal fringes of Victoria's basalt plain, as well as the inland salt lakes, are of both local and global significance.
The intertidal zones around Swan Bay and Limeburners Lagoon, where the mangroves, Avicennia marina, reach their southernmost range, are very important breeding grounds for many of the fish species that support Victoria's commercial fishing fleet, for example. The western shoreline of Port Phillip Bay and Bellarine Peninsula are seasonal feeding or nesting grounds for diverse species migratory waders, plus one of the world's rarest birds, the orange-bellied parrot. And the saltmarshes of Truganina Swamp are some of the last remaining habitats of the Altona Skipper Butterfly.
Some of the most unique saltwater wetlands on the plain, the volcanic craters of the Western District Lakes, are many kilometres inland. Like the wetlands on the western shoreline of Port Phillip Bay, these waters are protected under the Ramsar Convention.
The coastal wetlands have been subject to great changes in sea levels, some of which have also affected Aboriginal peoples. Eight thousand years ago what is now Port Phillip Bay was mostly dry land, but at other times the sea has risen high above its current level, as can be seen from the marine shell beds in Hovells Creek.
In the past sea-level changes have been caused by natural phenomena, but they have nevertheless precipitated great economic upheaval and cultural adjustment in every part of the world. It remains to be seen how contemporary human and non-human inhabitants of Victoria's basalt plain will adapt to the global and local consequences of predicted changes in sea level associated with the enhanced Greenhouse Effect.
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| Estuary of Little River, Port Phillip Bay, showing mudflats, saltmarsh and salt bush vegetation. |
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| Photo by Mark Trengove, Geelong Indigenous Nursery. |
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What are your stories about the saltwater wetlands of Victoria's basalt plain?
Copyright Copyright Imagine The Future Inc 2002.
Text by Merrill Findlay.
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