DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH OF VICTORIA   

Atlas Page 36
By James Smith

VICTORIA - LAKES.

There are not less than a hundred lakes in Victoria, although many of them are of so limited an area, covering from two hundred to five hundred acres only, as scarcely to entitle them to such a designation. About twenty of them are salt —and these include some of the largest —while there are eight or ten whose waters are decidedly brackish. Some of these appear to be the relics of an inland sea; while others have been rendered saline by the reception of the salts washed into them from the soil of the land they drain. Elsewhere the craters of extinct volcanoes have been transformed into natural reservoirs, as remarkable for their depth as for their transparency and beauty of colour. There are only three lake systems so called —that in South Gippsland, that in the counties of Granville, Hampden, and Polwarth, and that to which Lakes Hindmarsh and Albacutya belong. The most remarkable of the whole is the one first mentioned; it comprises Lake Wellington, Lake Victoria and Lake King, although the two latter are to all intents and purposes, one sheet of water. But in the narrow strip of country which separates them from the sea, and which in some places is less than two miles wide, a chain of salt-water lagoons skirts the Ninety-mile Beach for a distance of about fifty or sixty miles, the largest of which, entitled Lake Reeve, constitutes a kind of back-water in connection with Lake King and Lake Victoria.

By the usual route from Melbourne, Lake Wellington is reached through one of its principal affluents, the river Latrobe, which begins to be navigable for steamers of shallow draft a short distance from Sale. The stream winds through belts of ti-tree scrub and marshy pastures, in which nothing is seen but the ridgy backs of the cattle rising above the tall, coarse herbage on either bank; and presently, there breaks upon the view a broad expanse of grey-green water, ten miles long and eight miles wide, surrounded by low banks, and receiving the confluence of the Avon and the Perry, which come downward from the north. A natural canal, handsomely fringed with lofty scrub, which has acquired the title of Macmillan’s Straits, gives admission to Lake Victoria. This is narrower but longer than its neighbour, and offers the same tame scenery until Raymond Island is reached, where one arm of the lake bends downward in a southerly direction to the lakes’ entrance; and another, taking a northerly, and westerly trend, expands into Lake King, which, after rounding the attenuated promontory, known as Eagle Point, exchanges its appellation for that of Jones’ Bay. Here, too, the Mitchell, which has received in its course the waters of the Wonnangatta, the Dargo, and the Wentworth, pours itself into Lake King on one side of it, while the Nicholson and the Tambo bring their tribute to it on the other side.

From Tambo Bluff to Jemmy’s Point, and thence, indeed, to Cunningham, at the lake’s entrance, the banks on the left are higher, generally wooded, and not wanting in picturesqueness. But, upon the other shore, where a passage is being cut through a narrow tongue of land to the ocean, in lieu of the present fluctuating and precarious outlet, the sand hummocks thrown up by the sea are scantily sprinkled with ti-tree scrub contorted into fantastic attitudes by their struggle for existence with the fierce wind which so often beats inward from the south. A narrow spit of sand bars the egress of the waters of the lakes, except at one spot, where a chronic conflict is being waged between the current and the waves. The latter are continually casting up a sandy dyke as if to imprison the outgoing waters; but ever and anon the combined force of many rivers gathered together at this point, breaks through the unstable barrier and graves a channel for their pent up volume. Under such circumstances, coasting vessels endeavouring to enter or to leave the lakes are often detained for weeks together, to their great detriment and occasional danger; this has led to a scheme for an artificial outlet, and a plan, designed by Sir John Coode, is in course of construction, which, when completed, will be of immense advantage to the farmers, lumberers and fishermen, of an extensive district rich in natural resources.

The road, from the lakes’ entrance to Lake Tyers, climbs over the saddles of two hills, with deep glens between them, where the undergrowth is massed together in close battalions of lofty and leaf-wreathed hazel scrub, and the wild cherry and the native honeysuckle tree mingle their foliage with that of the wattle, eucalyptus and shag moss. Here, too, the pale lavender and faded pink tints of patches of dead ti-tree, looking like enormous bunches of delicate coral, together with the greenish azure of the blue gum sucklings and the white blossoms of the cauliflower scrub, lend an acceptable variety to the otherwise uniform colour of the sylvan scene. Then the devious track crosses a bit of naked moorland —a lofty promontory overlooking a wide expanse of sea —and dips down presently to the beach itself, traversing a narrow strip of glittering sand, which constitutes the southern boundary of Lake Tyers. This is the most beautiful sheet of water in south-eastern Victoria. Its distinctive charm consists in the irregularity of its outline and in its lofty banks, feathered with foliage to their very summit. It bears, indeed, a striking resemblance to Port Jackson, and does not yield to it in variety or in loveliness, while, perhaps, it can boast of a still greater number of coves and inlets. There are the same exquisitively curved lines, and the same grace of form and freshness of tint in the timber, which present themselves in that famous harbour. In some places, the trees are grouped in compact masses; in others they alternate with lawny interspaces of soft turf, or a thick carpet of bracken, or a tangled undergrowth of scrub, with here and there a patch of bare limestone protruding from the soil and indicating its formation. Ascending the Nowa Nowa arm of the lake, which is navigable by a steam launch for a distance of nearly twenty miles, there opens out a fresh promontory, wooded to the water’s edge, and another inlet framed in foliage and falling back to a natural amphitheatre, around which rise tier on tier of stately trees calmly contemplating their replications in the unruffled mirror at their feet. Then, again, comes a gully densely packed with tree-ferns, acmenas, and the pittosporums undulatum; and, at almost every turn in the perpetual windings of its course the vessel enters an apparently land-locked bay, from which no outlet is immediately visible until it shoots round a leafy knoll, and the traveller finds himself confronted by another vision of sylvan loveliness. Nor can he fail to be struck by, the special characteristics of the trees which drape the banks —their symmetry and the equability of their development showing that they have grown up in a calm, untroubled atmosphere, exempt from the turbulence of the wind which raves among the mountains to the northward, and howls along the sea-shore only a few miles off. At Erica Cliffs the vegetation assumes a tropical luxuriance of growth, while Oberon’s Retreat frowns upon the lake like the ruins of a dismantled fortress, and near it is a green recess in which Titania, with all her dainty following, might prosecute her revels

And plant her court upon a verdant mound,
Fenced with umbrageous woods and groves profound,
In absolute seclusion from any mortal eye.

For the purposes of the landscape painter, Lake Tyers is seen at its best when the sun has newly risen above the horizon or is sinking towards it, so that the level rays reveal golden vistas on one side of the water, while the opposite shore is veiled in shadow; and if there be no zephyr to shiver the surface of the otherwise placid mirror into a thousand wrinkles, every object is reflected in it with such startling distinctness of form and minuteness of detail that one scarcely knows where the land ends or the water begins. So, too, with respect to colour —the amber of the eastern and the ruby and the orange of the western sky are literally repeated on that smooth expanse, and the clouds that languidly float across the azure dome above have their duplicated motion in the waters of the lake below. The Tooloo arm, a name which is the native equivalent of a cul de sac, extends eight miles in a north-westerly direction, and is bordered by high, undulating and thickly-wooded banks. It has deep inlets, some of them walled in by overhanging rocks, and it terminates in a winding river, which approaches it under cover of lofty cliffs tapestried with creepers and crowned with trees, among which the pittosporum is conspicuous for the beauty of its form and the vivid verdure of its foliage.

Lake Corangamite lies in the midst of entirely different scenery, three hundred and eighty feet above the level of the sea. Its waters are salt, and they cover an area of ninety square miles, It is about sixteen miles long, with a breadth of eight miles in its widest part. Situated at the junction of four counties —Grenville, Hampden, Heytesbury and Polwarth —forms the centre of a cluster of lakes and lagoons, nearly fifty in number, five of which, Colac, Elingamite, Terang, Purrumbete and Connewarren —are fresh, while the others are nearly all salt or brackish. Lakes Elingamite, Terang and Purrumbete occupy the craters of extinct volcanoes, the original magnitude of which may be inferred from the fact that the first covers an area of eight hundred acres, the second of nearly three hundred, and the third of no less than one thousand four hundred and fifty. The district in which these lakes are situated, divides, with Gippsland, the claim to be considered the garden of Victoria. It is greatly favoured as regards soil and climate. Much of the former is of volcanic origin, and is extremely fertile in consequence; and the annual rainfall, which ranges from thirty to forty inches within forty or fifty miles of the coast, is nowhere less than from twenty to thirty inches, a higher average being reached in the Valley of the Wannon. Hence the general verdure of the landscape and the favourable conditions under which the pursuits of husbandry are conducted. Amenity, is the most striking characteristic of the scenery; the hills rarely attaining a greater altitude than fifteen hundred feet, except in the case of Mount Emu, which reaches a height of three thousand feet; and the lakes, faithfully reflecting all the moods, the sailing clouds, and the glory or gloom of the heavens overhead, confer a special charm upon the landscape. Corangamite and Colac, which are only six or seven miles apart, are eminently picturesque, both in themselves and in their surroundings, for above the fair champaign which girdles them, tower the isolated hills of Great Warrion, Leura, Porndon, Wiridgil and Myrtoon, to say nothing of the stony rises to the south; and the whole district, with the numerous flocks and herds browsing on its pastures, its comfortable homesteads and substantial country mansions, girdled by clumps of exotic trees and well-kept pleasure grounds, breathes an air of prosperity and comfort.

A very short distance from Lake Corangamite is a smaller but much deeper sheet of water bearing the name of Little Corangamite, but this is perfectly fresh. Indeed, nothing can be more capricious than these variations of quality throughout the whole of the western district; and in the centre of one salt-water reservoir, it is said, there wells up a strong spring of the pure fresh element so icily cold that to swim across it is almost certain death. Hence, perhaps, the aboriginal tradition that this lake (Gnotuk) was the abode of an evil spirit who took a malignant pleasure in seizing upon the strongest swimmers and dragging them "through caverns measureless to man," like those described by Coleridge, "down to a sunless sea."

In the north-western portion of the colony there is a chain of fresh-water lakes formed by the expansion of the river Wimmera over an extensive but extremely shallow depression, embracing, in the case of Lake Hindmarsh, an area of thirty thousand acres, and in that of Lake Albacutya thirteen thousand acres. The river, taking its rise among the Pyrenees, and augmented by affluents from the Grampians, flows in a northerly direction for a distance of something like a hundred miles, feeding the two lakes we have mentioned and then disappearing in the sandy plains which stretch away to the Murray. The evaporation hat takes place in such a hot and arid region is enormous, and is of course all the greater and more rapid by reason of the broad surface exposed to the action of the sun’s rays at the two points named. In seasons of drought, Lakes Hindmarsh and Albacutya are little better than geographical expressions, for nothing is to be seen of either but a huge marsh with, perhaps, a thin and intermittent thread of water crawling deviously through its centre.

In point of magnitude, Lake Tyrrell ranks second to Lake Corangamite covering as it does an area of forty-two thousand six hundred acres. It lies sixty miles to the north-west of Lake Albacutya, in a very similar country densely covered by the mallee scrub. It owes its existence, like the two just described to a stream flowing into it from the south, but it has no ascertained outlet to the north. In form it bears a striking resemblance to ‘ bean which has just begun to germinate, and it is surrounded by an almost uninterrupted zone of sandhills. It has a cluster of small islands near its western shore, and is as liable to a remarkable shrinkage of its waters during a season of prolonged drought as the lakes previously mentioned. This is the characteristic also of Lake Buloke, which lies fifty miles due south of Lake Tyrrell, and has an area of eleven thousand acres. Into it are poured the waters of the Avon and the Richardson, without any apparent channel for their outflow; but there are periods in which this shallow reservoir becomes a muddy hollow, sun-baked and lined and interlined with cracks and fissures. Indeed, it may be asserted of the Victorian lakes on the north side of the Great Dividing Range that permanence and picturesqueness are qualities which Nature has denied them.

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