Kooyoora State Park is a state park in

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

located northwest of

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

, and west of Inglewood. It is a reserve comprising box-ironbark forest and rocky

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

outcrops, including the ''Melville Caves''. Popular activities include bird watching, horse riding, camping, caving, rock climbing, fossicking, and bush walking. Facilities include walking tracks, lookouts, a campground, toilets, and a picnic ground complete with a covered shelter featuring a stone fireplace with chimney named Catto Lodge. This lodge was named after local resident Stanley Ross Catto (dec) who worked tirelessly to develop the park. Kooyoora State Park was proclaimed in 1985. The original inhabitants of the area were the Jaara people who used the rock caves and shelters for protection from the weather. European settlers moved into the area in the 1840s and gold mining commenced in the late 1850s. The bushranger,

Captain Melville Francis McNeiss McNeil McCallum (Captain Melville) (c 1823- 10 August 1857) was a Scottish-born Australian notorious bushranger during the early part of the Victorian Gold Rush in Australia. Transportation After being convicted under the alias ...

is believed to have used the area as a hideout. The native grasslands provide a food source for

kangaroo Kangaroos are four marsupials from the family Macropodidae (macropods, meaning "large foot"). In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern gre ...

s and

wallabies A wallaby () is a small or middle-sized macropod native to Australia and New Guinea, with introduced populations in New Zealand, Hawaii, the United Kingdom and other countries. They belong to the same taxonomic family as kangaroos and so ...

. Key tree species include

Blakely's Red Gum ''Eucalyptus blakelyi'', known as Blakely's red gum, is a tree Endemism, endemic to eastern Australia. It has smooth bark on its trunk and branches, dull bluish green, lance-shaped adult leaves, flower buds usually in groups of seven, white flowe ...

Yellow Yellow is the color between green and orange on the spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575585 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In the R ...

and Grey Box and Red Ironbark.

References

State parks of Victoria (Australia) Protected areas established in 1985 1985 establishments in Australia {{VictoriaAU-geo-stub