March 2008

22nd - 24th March

Bogong High Plains, Australian Alps

I went walking on the Bogong High Plains in the Australian Alps over Easter. Vast areas of the Alps were burn a few years back. The regeneration has begun and the wildflowers are prolific in many areas (helped by the removal of cattle grazing a decade or so ago). However, the beautiful snow gums grow very slowly and may take a centuary or more to regain their former magisty. That swamp is in an area that largely escaped the fires. It was like camping in a little patch of heaven.

	View north across Great Dividing Range from Mt Fainter		Pretty Lake at dawn
	Snowgums		High Plains swamp - tent and campsite at bottom

14th March

Lake Corangamite, and Vaune Island in the distance

Lake Corangamite

I visited Lake Corangamite again. It's Australia's largest 'permanent' salt lake.

This photo is taken from a spot formerly known as the Colac Beach. During the 60s the lake level would have been several metres above my head, the shore would have been busy with swimming and playing kids and adults, boats would have been bobbing about in this view. Pelicans and other water birds were abundant, feeding on schools of fish and breeding in colonies, including on Vaune Island, which you can see in the distance. (Vaune Island is no longer an island.)

The water continues to recede in the wake of an extraordinarily hot autumn that has baked southern Australia with temperatures more typical of summer. The salinity is probably about 4 or 5x that of sea water now. I doubt that there are still any brine shrimp and isopods. Until a few years ago they continued to support water birds such banded stilts.

In the foreground of this image you can see that sand and silt has begun to shift across the lake bed. The entire eastern shore of the lake is a 10m high lunette of sediment, formed during dry periods prior to the settlement of Victoria. Currently the lake bed sediments are bound by salt. However, the salt leaches away with winter rains, so lunette formation will recommence if we don't at some stage get winters wet enough to cause the lake bed to be re-inundate.