The Newer Volcanics Province is a geological area which is a volcanic field, formed by the East Australia hotspot across south-eastern Australia. It covers an area of , with over 400 small shield volcanoes and

volcanic vent A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates are ...

s. The area contains the youngest

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the Crust (geology), crust of a Planet#Planetary-mass objects, planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and volcanic gas, gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Ear ...

es in Australia. The volcanoes date from the Late-

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togeth ...

ages. The area is characterised by flat lava flows, forming a plain above which rise numerous small scoria cones,

tuff ring Phreatomagmatic eruptions are volcanic eruptions resulting from interaction between magma and water. They differ from exclusively magmatic eruptions and phreatic eruptions. Unlike phreatic eruptions, the products of phreatomagmatic eruptions cont ...

s, and maars. The most recent eruptions in the region took place at

Mount Schank Mount Schank is a high dormant volcano in the southeast corner of South Australia, near Mount Gambier. It was sighted by James Grant on 3 December 1800 and named after Admiral John Schank, designer of Grant's ship, HMS '' Lady Nelson''. Mount ...

and

Mount Gambier Mount Gambier is the second most populated city in South Australia, with an estimated urban population of 33,233 . The city is located on the slopes of Mount Gambier, a volcano in the south east of the state, about south-east of the capital Ad ...

, estimated about 5000 years BP, when several maars were formed and associated lava flows spread around the

cones A cone is a three-dimensional geometric shape that tapers smoothly from a flat base (frequently, though not necessarily, circular) to a point called the apex or vertex. A cone is formed by a set of line segments, half-lines, or lines conn ...

Volcanoes

Prominent volcanoes within the province include: *

Mount Napier Mount Napier in Victoria, Australia, is one of the youngest volcanoes in Australia. It erupted about 32,000 years ago. It was named by Major Thomas Mitchell after the three Napier brothers, who he had served alongside during the Peninsular Wa ...

(including Blue Lake) *

Tower Hill Tower Hill is the area surrounding the Tower of London in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is infamous for the public execution of high status prisoners from the late 14th to the mid 18th century. The execution site on the higher gro ...

* Mount Elephant *

Mount Eccles Budj Bim, also known as Mount Eccles, is a dormant volcano near Macarthur in southwestern Victoria, Australia. It lies within the geologically-defined area known as the Newer Volcanics Province, which is the youngest volcanic area in Austral ...

(Budj Bim), with associated Tyrendarra lava flow * Mount Leura * Mount Noorat * Mount Buninyong * Lake Bullen Merri * Lake Purrumbete * Red Rock

Aboriginal Dreamtime connections

History Three groups of

Aboriginal Australians Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Isl ...

, the

Kulin nation The Kulin nation is an alliance of five Aboriginal nations in south central Victoria, Australia. Their collective territory extends around Port Phillip and Western Port, up into the Great Dividing Range and the Loddon and Goulburn River va ...

in central and western Victoria, the Maar nation on the southwest coast of Victoria and the Bunganditj nation on the South Australian border with Victoria, are the

traditional owners Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is the recognition by Australian law that Indigenous Australians (both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people) have right ...

of the lands that the NVP is situated on. These Indigenous Australians tell Dreamtime stories regarding volcanic activity on the Australian continent. These stories act as oral histories of natural events, and can be utilised by modern scientists to understand historical geological and seismic activity on the continent. Budj Bim The

Gunditjmara The Gunditjmara or Gunditjamara, also known as Dhauwurd Wurrung, are an Aboriginal Australian people of southwestern Victoria. They are the traditional owners of the areas now encompassing Warrnambool, Port Fairy, Woolsthorpe and Portland. Th ...

people retell the story of their people who witnessed the creation of an important being known as Budj Bim, one of four giant beings who arrived in southeast Australia. While three of these beings strode out to other parts of the continent, one stayed in place; that was Budj Bim. His body transformed into the volcano later given the same name, and his teeth became the lava that transformed the landscape. Theories and Disagreements In 1878, Robert B. Smyth, a mining engineer and geologist, raised a question on how Aboriginal Australians get fire. He agreed that there were active volcanoes in Victoria; however, he claimed that there was uncertainty as to whether people actually inhabited that land. However, it was later proven that Smyth had an incomplete idea of Australia's geological past.

Volcanoes

Aboriginal Dreamtime connections

See also

References

Further reading