DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH OF VICTORIA   

Atlas Page 35
By James Smith

VICTORIA - MOUNTAINS.

An undulating and devious spine, commencing at the eastern boundary of the colony, near some of the sources of the Snowy River, dipping down into the valley of the Mitchell, then making its reappearance five and twenty miles to the northward, and curving round, like a bow, to Kilmore, whence it stretches in a westerly, direction to Mount Ararat, where it throws out a few spurs and then stops short in face of the massive ranges which there run from north to south, is the most conspicuous feature of the mountain scenery of Victoria. Upon the southern slopes rise the numerous rivers which discharge their waters into the sea, while the northern flanks supply the various affluents of the Murray. But in no case does the highest peak attain a higher elevation than six thousand one hundred feet above the level of the sea, although this altitude is exceeded in two instances by spurs thrown off from the main or Great Dividing Range. These spurs are of remarkable complexity in the eastern counties of the colony, in some of which, as for example in Benambra, Tambo, Dargo, the north-western part of Croajingolong, Bogong, the southern half of Delatite, Wonnangatta, and Evelyn, the area of country occupied by labyrinthine ranges probably exceeds that of the valleys and lowlands comprehended within their limits. In many instances the mountains grouped together, independently of the dorsal range, resemble an octopus in shape. From a central eminence between four and five thousand feet in height, as at Mount Baldhead, Mount Bindi, and Mount Bowen, limbs are thrown out towards all points of the compass, terminating generally in a bold declivity. Occasionally all isolated range will wriggle, snake-like, for a distance of thirty or forty miles through an otherwise open country. At other times a mountain chain will protrude short spurs, or foot hills, at almost regular intervals like the feet of a caterpillar, to which its irregular contour will offer a certain fantastic and exaggerated resemblance. Strictly speaking, the Great Dividing Range is merely a continuation or extension of that which runs down the whole of the Australian continent from Cape York to Forest Hill, at which point it is deflected to the, south-westward so as still to maintain, in the direction it assumes, that parallelism to the coast which it has observed in its previous course. At Mount Baw Baw it appears to send out a southerly tier of equal magnitude and altitude to that which constitutes its western extension, and this stretches to the sea-coast and reappears on the island of Tasmania.

Entering the colony at Forest Hill, the Great Dividing Range sweeps round in a semi-circle to the peak six thousand and twenty-five feet high known as the Cobberas, whence it pursues a serpentine course, under the name of the Bowen Ranges, until it reaches its most southerly point in the amphitheatre where the river Mitta Mitta gathers together the springs which form its source. Southward, a remarkable off-set shoots out, about ten miles in length, with Notch Hill (over four thousand six hundred feet in height) —halfway between the main system —and Mount Baldhead (four thousand five hundred and seven feet) as its points of greatest elevation. From this, as from a ganglion, radiate in all directions subsidiary ranges which, in their ramifications, resemble the distribution of the nerves in the human body. The Great Divide, doubling back to the north, reaches its greatest altitude at Mount Hotham (over four thousand feet), which is another ganglion, sending forth its plexus to the north. The Barry Mountains, running almost in a straight line due west, serve as a connecting link between Mount Hotham and Mount Howitt (over five thousand seven hundred feet), above which the main range bends round to the south, resuming its westerly course at Mount Selma; and pursues it thence, with numerous fluctuations, until it dips into a marshy plain a few miles beyond Ararat, at the western extremity of which, the Grampians, the Serra and Victoria Ranges, running from north to south, constitute an independent system.

For picturesque variety, the Bogong Range can scarcely be surpassed even in the Alpine region to which it belongs, teeming as it does with loft peaks and softly rounded domes, solitary heights which no human foot has trodden from the foundation of the world, and deep ravines and moist valleys with springs and streams which maintain a perpetual verdure by, their never-failing water. During the winter months the summits of the higher mountains are clothed in robes of dazzling snow, stainless as an infant’s soul, which glitter like helmets and cuirasses of plated silver in the sunlight, and have a weird, wan beauty that has something spectral and eerie in it when the moon touches them with a pallid lustre. They impress the mind less perhaps by majesty of form than by magnitude of substance. A chain seventy miles in length, and culminating In a peak attaining the elevation of six thousand five hundred and eight feet, sends out lateral ranges to the eastward from fifteen to twenty miles in extension, numbering its spurs by hundreds, and giving birth to innumerable water sources, swollen to the dimensions of rivers directly the snow begins to melt at the beginning of the summer. And if, as has been said, "loveliness of colour, perfection of form, endlessness of change, and wonderfulness of structure, are precious to all undiseased human minds," we may find them all combined in this lonely and lovely district. Under all the vicissitudes of the season, and in all hours of the day, the colour of the mountains prefers an indisputable claim upon the admiration. Under some aspects, it is an intense purple, and there is a suggestion in it of softness and smoothness of texture as if the hills were apparelled in sumptuous velvet or sheeny plush; at other times the hue is a turquoise blue, variegated in the shadowy recesses by a deep emerald green. Again, the lofty landscape will be enveloped in a filmy veil of vapour, very tender in tone, and analogous in tint to the first reek of a peat fire as it issues in spiral wreaths from the chimney of a highland shieling when the braes are purple with the changing heather. As to form, the variety is endless, and the beautiful curves of the flowing lines are charmingly broken in upon and diversified by sharp peaks, by granitic pinnacles, and by the acute points of broad-based pyramids. Not only so, but at the very summit of the Bogong Ranges, as is the case also in the Dargo Ranges which run parallel to them, there are grassy plains of considerable extent, from four to six thousand feet above the level of the sea, undulating in surface, and not altogether bare of timber. From these lofty plateaux, the descent into the valleys beneath is precipitous, heavily timbered in some places and clothed with a thick scrub in others. The structure of these mountains is full of interest to the geologist. The bedrock is composed —according to the careful study of the district made by Mr. Alfred W. Howitt, the explorer, who worthily sustains the good name he has inherited from William and Mary Howitt —of lower silurian shales and sandstones, with metamorphic schists of granites. Above these occur the gravels, sands and clays deposited there in the miocene age, overlying which are beds of lava, constituting the plains previously spoken of, the highest peaks consisting of palaeozoic rocks. Some of the plateaux are described as presenting the appearance of having been "paved with five-sided blocks of stone, and in some of the mountain sides, where landslips have taken place, are acres covered with jumbled heaps of five-sided logs of basalt." As the thickness of the volcanic outflow amounts in some places to seven hundred feet, it is reasonably concluded that this could not have been poured forth in a single stream. Up to the present time no extinct craters have been discovered in this mountainous region, which has been only partially explored, and Mr. Howitt believes they will have to be sought for in the country to the north and north-west of the highlands of Bogong and Dargo. Many of the creeks and gullies draining the plateaux are represented to be auriferous, but the gold appears to be thinly distributed over so wide an area as to preclude its being mined except on a large scale.

As the tourist toils laboriously to the summit of one of the more accessible of these mountains in a secluded portion of the range, amidst the awful silence of a forest peopled with patriarchal trees, the tourist is oppressed by a feeling of solitude which has in It something of solemnity. He stands face to face, moreover, with an antiquity which is almost incalculable. Each of the sylvan giants, which dwarf his own stature to that of a pigmy, belongs to an epoch so remote, that all dynasties, all political institutions, all living literatures, and all social organisations, seem to be things of yesterday in comparison. When these trees were self-sown, our savage ancestors were clothed in skins, were feeding on roots, were hovelling in caves. For tens of thousands of times did the sun rise and set, the moon wax and wane, the stars come forth in glittering myriads after nightfall; and all the beautiful processes of Nature went on, in their majestic order and regularity, unhelped and unhindered by Man. Silently the young tree put forth its tender germ; silently the sapling lifted itself upward to the light; and silently, century after century, the aspiring column rose among its fellows, until, attaining an altitude of three hundred feet or more, it spread its crown of foliage to die sun, and received through all the changing seasons the messages uttered, now in soft murmuring whispers, and now in accents of passionate fury, by the winds. In older, or should we not say in younger, countries all sorts of human associations are connected with the mountain and the forest. Each has its history and its legends. The former may be vaster or more terrible in Europe, in Northern India and in South America but neither the highest aiguilles of the Alps, nor the sublime heights of the Himalayas, nor the snowy summits of the Andes, are dissevered from human interest like the unexplored ranges of Australia. So also with the forests of Europe, and of Asia more particularly. The cedars of Lebanon carry us back to the days of Solomon; the sacred fig of the Hindoo village has been the place of refuge and of prayer for generation after generation of the native worshippers of Brahma; angels are described as having visited Abraham under the trees in the valley of Mamre; Alexander the Great requested that he might be buried in the forest of Libya; the fountain of Egeria flowed from a consecrated wood in the Roman Campagna; it was to the forest of Dodona that the two black doves flew when they forsook the shrine of the Theban Jupiter; the woods of Britain and Gaul are haunted by memories of druids and druidesses, and recall the exploits of famous outlaws ; while the genius of Shakespeare has invested two forests with undying interest by associating them with such exquisite creations as those which speak to us in "As You Like It" and the "Midsummer Night’s Dream." But the mountains and woods of Australia have not been thus consecrated. They belong to the infancy of the world. Their virgin solitudes, in numberless instances, have never been penetrated by the foot even of the black man. To plunge into the forest, and to scale the summit of the wooded range, is like receiving admission into the inner most sanctuary of Nature. She has secluded these mysterious regions from the human eye ever since the dawn of creation. But for the rustle of a lizard in the grass; but for the occasional apparition of a bird glancing across the pillared aisles of the stupendous cathedral which lifts its vaulted roof of foliage so high overhead; but for the chiming of an unseen spring, fretting and chafing against the mossy boulders which impede its downward course; and but for a faint and far-off stir —a sort of muffled music in the air —when the wind plays with the leaves which loftily over-arch the difficult path, the traveller would be enveloped by absolute stillness, to which, after a time, he is so accustomed and reconciled that the ear becomes preternaturally sensitive to sound, and any, violent impact upon it, like the firing of a gun, occasions almost a feeling of pain.

But in the winter season all is changed. Instead of the silence and serenity of the long, calm days of January and February —when the very air seems to have fallen asleep and the sun flames across a cloudless sky as lustrous as burnished silver, "shining on, shining on, by, no shadow made tender"; when the motionless leaves of the trees in the forest appear as if they were ready to crackle with the heat; and when the plains below shimmer and quiver in the fierce light of the almost vertical luminary, and a hot haze envelops the distant ranges, chequered in places by volumes of white smoke arising from bush fires —gloom and tumult invade the landscape; murmuring runnels are transformed into roaring torrents; voluminous clouds, sullen and sombre in aspect, drift inland, shrouding the rugged summits of the highest mountains in an atmosphere of vapour, and investing them with an air of mystery. For days, and even weeks together, they are completely effaced —blotted out by the opaque masses of rain-cloud rolling up their massive sides and resembling emanations from the surface of some vast’ cauldron, or the mists and exhalations which Faust describes as arising from the deepest abysses of the Brocken. And when the short tempestuous day has yielded to the night, the scene recalls that so vividly depicted by an English poet:

The reeling clouds
Stagger with dizzy poise, as doubting yet
Which master to obey: while rising slow,
Blank, in the leaden-coloured east, the moon
Wears a war circle round her blunted horns.
Seen through the turbid fluctuating air,
The stars obtuse emit a shivering ray;
Or frequent seem to shoot athwart the gloom,
And long behind them trail the whitening blaze.

By night or day, the transitory glimpses afforded of these huge ranges impress one with a deeper feeling, not only of their bulk and magnitude, but of their elevation, for they loom through the mist, or reveal themselves with imposing effect when the clouds are suddenly riven asunder, with an augmentation of their mass attributable to the vapoury medium which interposes itself between them and the eye of the spectator. Other transformations occur in the aspect of these ranges after an interval of cold clear weather, at the same period of the year, when the free selector on the distant plains, issuing from the door. of his hut in the earl morning, sees the crests of the far-stretching mass sharply outlined against a steel-blue sky, wearing a robe of spotless white, woven by the deft and subtle fingers of the frost, during the stillness of the night, out of the wreaths of vapour which had been drifting along the ridges, when the darkness fell upon them a few hours before.

A radial line of thirty miles drawn from Mount Bogong would comprehend within its circumference, with one exception, the whole of the loftiest peaks in Victoria, as for example Towanga (four thousand one hundred and sixty-one feet), the Buffalo (five thousand six hundred and forty-five feet), Feathertop (six thousand three hundred and three feet), Fainter (six thousand one hundred and sixty feet), Hotham (six thousand one hundred feet), Cope (six thousand and fifteen feet), Wills (five thousand seven hundred and fifty-eight feet), Tambo (four thousand seven hundred feet), Benambra (four thousand eight hundred and fifty feet), and the Twins (five thousand five hundred and seventy-five feet). The exception is Mount Cobberas, which lies about fifty miles, as the crow flies, due east of Mount Bogong, the monarch of the Victorian mountains, being six thousand five hundred and eight feet above the sea-level.

The geological formations of this district, as mapped out and explained by Mr. Reginald A. F. Murray, are few in number and so simple as to render them intelligible to the non-scientific reader: —"Lower silurian slates, shales and sandstones, and metamorphic schists and granites form the bed-rock of the whole. This bed-rock is overlaid in parts by gravels, sands and clays, whose fossil flora indicate them to be of miocene or middle tertiary age, and, wherever found, these are covered by varying thicknesses of lava, forming the plateaux or high plains already referred to"; that is to say, the Bogong and Dargo highlands, consisting of open, undulating plains and moors, from four to six thousand feet above the sea-level, and smaller ones which do not attain more than half that elevation. "The highest peaks consist of the palaeozoic rocks, which are also plainly exposed in all the deeper rivers and creeks that intersect the plateaux and separate them from one another. These watercourses contain drifts and gravels of post tertiary age, made up of the materials denuded from the bed-rock, the middle tertiary beds and the basalts. The geological history of the district, deduced from the above data, is that in middle tertiary times the beds of the watercourses were at a far higher relative elevation than those of the present day; that flows of lava took place which filled in the valleys of the period, and that the present rivers then commenced to cut their way, and have, during long ages, eroded their valleys as they now exist, sometimes parallel with and sometimes across the ancient river beds." There is every reason to believe that the flow of lava from the active volcanoes of a remote epoch was confined to the narrow valleys which are so characteristic of this romantic region. These are, in some cases, not more than a mile and rarely more than two miles wide, measuring from ridge to ridge of the ranges by which they are flanked. This is the case with the hollow lying between the parallel spurs, that resemble in shape the prongs of a tuning-fork, thrown out from Mount Cobbler (five thousand three hundred and forty-two feet), and running in a straight line due north for a distance of sixteen miles. Each depression is the bed of a creek or river flowing down its centre, and fed by a hundred tributaries taking their rise in the wooded heights above. Such are the sources of the streams which empty themselves directly into the Pacific or discharge their waters into the Gippsland lakes on the one side of the Great Divide, or contribute to swell the volume of the Murray by means of the Mitta Mitta, the Ovens and the Goulburn, on the other.

Another striking bifurcation occurs at Mount St. Bernard, which is the diverging point of two important ranges, both taking a northerly direction, the shorter off-set trending somewhat to the westward for eight miles until it reaches Growler’s Hill, when it again divides and throws out two branches, each of them terminating about twelve miles from its starting point. The other and longer arm is about thirty-five miles in length, with diverging spurs innumerable on both sides. Its most conspicuous peaks and pinnacles are Mount Hotham and Mount Feathertop. The latter derives its appellation from the resemblance which its outline presents —as seen from the lofty plateaux known as the Baw Baw, Precipice and Horsehair Plains —to the graceful curve of an ostrich feather. These tablelands have been partially explored by adventurous gold-seekers, who have discovered the precious metal in payable quantities among the gravels which seem to have formed the beds of ancient rivers flowing in some instances, a thousand feet above the level of the streams which are now, marked on the map.

Mr. Alfred W. Howitt, after a careful and prolonged investigation of the geological structure of North Gippsland, has been led to make the following statement: —"That the general land surface of Victoria probably stood in miocene times some eight hundred feet lower in respect to the sea-level than it now does, and as the elevation and depression of the land seems to have been, on the whole, equal over large tracts in Southern Australia, we may conclude that the miocene Dargo flowed at least two thousand feet above the sea-level. This view would indicate a much warmer climate, and would agree with conclusions as to temperature to be drawn from the marine fauna of the miocene limestones of Bairnsdale."

Mount Feathertop is one of a cluster of eight peaks, three of them unnamed, none of which is less than five thousand eight hundred feet above the sea-level, nor more than five miles distant from the centre of the Bogong High Plains; but it is extremely probable that other eminences quite as lofty as the highest of these remain undiscovered in this intricate labyrinth of mountainous country, so much of which awaits thorough exploration.

Next in importance to this network of ranges, which covers the greater part of an area one hundred and sixteen miles long and one hundred and twenty miles broad, those in the counties of Evelyn, Anglesey and Mornington, are entitled to take rank, although none of them attain the elevation of the mountains previously referred to. Strictly speaking, they form part of one system, and are laterals thrown off from the, Great Divide; Mount St. Leonard, Mount Monda, Mount Juliet and Mount Baw Baw being the most prominent of the culminating points in this region, which, so far as the county of Evelyn is concerned, contains a much smaller proportion of level country than of densely timbered mountain chains dipping abruptly down, into narrow valleys, affording barely space enough for a brawling stream to groove a channel. Here and there, however, a cup-like hollow may be found, with room sufficient for the formation of an Alpine village, one thousand five hundred or two thousand feet above the level of the sea, " remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," with the purple mountains folding it in their cold embrace, and a purling, brook of the purest water gliding past cottage gardens which never lose their verdure. A wayside inn with its broad verandah, where the local gossips gather after the labours of the day are over; a wheelwright’s shop, where the roaring of the forge is a pleasant thing to listen to, and the red glare of the flames is comforting to look at on a chilly winter evening; a general store with a highly miscellaneous stock of merchandise; a State school of limited dimensions, a dozen or two of weatherboard cottages, form the constituents of this isolated hamlet; but it is linked with the larger life and the restless activities of the metropolis, seventy or eighty miles distant, by a daily coach, the morning, departure and evening arrival of which occasion a momentary ripple upon the otherwise stagnant mill-pond of the monotonous lives led by these secluded folk: after which gentle excitement the place relapses into its habitual repose.

A curious feature of the Great Dividing Range is that, due north of Port Phillip Bay, it recedes inland, where its course bears a general resemblance to the curvature of that inlet. The general altitude of the mountains diminishes as they approach the west, and Mount Macedon, although so conspicuous by its height and bulk, does not attain a greater eminence than three thousand three hundred and twenty-four feet. Sixteen miles to the westward of it, the range throws off a northern spur, about twenty-five miles in length, terminating just beyond Sandhurst. On each side of the main range are numerous detached hills, some of them between two thousand four hundred and two thousand five hundred feet above the sea-level, and their complete isolation —as in the cases of Mounts Blackwood, Franklin, Warrenheip and Buninyong —gives them an imposing character. Beyond Lexton, where —the range begins to be known as the Pyrenees; the hills have combined to form it beautiful amphitheatre, triangular in shape, and less than a mile across in its widest part. The Sugarloaf forms its apex, and in the green hollow of this romantic spot the waters of the Avoca take their rise, and find an outlet to the north. Near Ararat, the Pyrenees, after making a sharp bend to the north-west and an equally abrupt detour to the south-west, branch off into two arms, and then come to an end. One of these is known as the Black Range, and the other reaches an altitude of two thousand and twenty feet at Mount Ararat.

Little more than a mile from the farthest outpost of the southern limit, and separated from it by a marsh, lies the most easterly spur of the Grampians, or Serra Range, in the midst of which the rivers Wannon, Glenelg, and Wimmera take their rise. There is one main range, upwards of fifty miles in length and forty in breadth, with four subsidiary ranges, all having a meridional direction, and attaining their greatest elevation in Mount William, three thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven feet above the sea-level. The sedimentary rocks of which they are composed are estimated to cover an area of one thousand two hundred and twenty miles; and these rocks for seven hundred and eighty miles are one vast, mass of freestone of the purest quality. Something like fifteen hundred feet of it is exposed in natural section; for, on the eastern face of the range, there are majestic cliffs and massive escarpments rising as high as three thousand two hundred feet in one place above the level of the sea. This one would almost expect to find flowing at their base. From it indeed they were originally upheaved. But now they lift themselves above billows of foliage, and overlook a pastoral landscape freshened by winding streams, and populous with flocks and herds; while, in one secluded nook, a waterfall leaps rejoicingly down from a ledge of rock a hundred feet high to join the Wimmera in the northern plains.

Thirty miles to the north-east of Mount Zero, which marks the termination of the Grampians in a northerly direction, there rises abruptly from the dead level of an extensive plain abounding in miniature lakes, both salt and fresh —these lying sometimes almost side by side —a curiously fantastic mass of rock, one thousand one hundred and seventy-six feet in height, which has received the name of Mount Arapiles. In its horizontal laminations and vertical fissures, it resembles the stupendous foundation walls of some vast edifice planned and commenced by Titans and then abandoned, leaving Nature to adorn the ruin, according to her gracious wont, by crowning its summit with forest trees and weaving a robe of foliage about its feet. A little to the northward of it, surmounting a wooded mound is another columnar rock, but of very much smaller dimensions, with a cleft-crest, whence it has derived the appellation of the Mitre Rock. Near by is a salt-water pool which has received the name of Mitre Lake, and it stands midway, between two sheets of water, Lake Natimuk and St. Mary’s Lake, both of which are fresh.

Northward of the Grampians and Mount Arapiles, the country slopes gradually downward to the Murray, with scarcely a hill to break the monotonous level of the landscape, and the mallee scrub commences within about seven miles from the Mitre Rock. In the sandy soil of the district, the trees, from which it takes its’ name, thrive amidst the most discouraging circumstances, covering the ground so thickly in places as to form a perfect jungle, interweaving their sombre foliage overhead and having their stems interlaced at times by a species of wild vine, or liana, as supple as cordage when it is twining round them, and as rigid as a wire cable when it has got them well within its grip. Lowan, in which Mount Arapiles is situated, takes, its name from a native bird, also variously entitled the brush turkey, the mallee pheasant, and the mallee hen, the Megapodus Tumulus of naturalists. It is somewhat larger than a good-sized fowl, and it lays its eggs, which are disproportionally large, in an artificial mound constructed by the co-operation of many pairs of birds, by whom they are annually enlarged and repaired. Some of these tumuli are fifteen feet high with a like circumference; but a large one when measured was found to be no less than fifty yards round its base. They are, entered by a funnel-like cavity at the top, and the eggs are laid six feet below the surface, each hen depositing one in a cavity twenty inches from its neighbours, and then covering it with soil and carefully smoothing over the surface. The eggs are placed vertically, are laid during the night at intervals of several days, and are about the size of those of a goose. They are hatched by the heat of the soil in which they are placed; but the mallee hen is so shy, and at the same time so vigilant, that it is difficult to say whether the parent birds assist their young in escaping from the grave in which the eggs have been buried.

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