Strzelecki Ranges

The Strzelecki Ranges ( ; ) is a range of low mountains located in the West Gippsland and South Gippsland regions of the Australian state of Victoria.

The Ranges are named after Paweł Edmund Strzelecki, a Polish explorer, who with the assistance of Charley Tarra, the small party's Aboriginal guide, led an expedition through this region in 1840.

They also form a biogeographic subregion of the South Eastern Highlands. "Land of the Lyrebird" is also a common alternative name for the Strzelecki Ranges based on a popular 1920s book.

Geography

The Strzelecki Ranges generally run east-west and extend for roughly 100 km. They are composed of deeply dissected sandstone and mudstone, rising from 300 to 500 metres, with the highest point at Mount Tassie being 740 metres.

The north is bounded by the Latrobe River and the south by the coast dominated by Wilsons Promontory, Corner Inlet and the Ninety-Mile beach.

The Strzelecki Ranges presents a diverse range of landscapes that are difficult to simply categorise, but they are essentially in two parts: western and eastern.

The western ranges have been successfully cleared for agriculture and feature green rolling hills with small farms and settlements in the south like Korumburra, Foster, and Leongatha and towns like Yarragon, Trafalgar, Warragul, Morwell, and Traralgon in the north that extend along the Princes Highway.

The eastern Strzeleckis remain heavily forested with steep dissected ridges and valleys with high rainfall. The settlements that encircle the Ranges include Boolarra, Churchill, and Gormandale in the north and Toora and Yarram in the south, while the eastern boundary is marked by Won Wron and Willung South on the Gippsland Plain.

The township of Mirboo North sits between the two parts, straddling the main ridge. The average annual temperature in Mirboo North ranges between a cool 12.8 °C in winter and a temperate 26.6 °C in summer, with annual rainfall averaging 1040 mm.

The Strzelecki Ranges are so expansive they overlap five Local Government Areas. The western section primarily sits within Baw Baw, South Gippsland and Bass Coast shires while the eastern portion is mostly within the City of LaTrobe and Shire of Wellington.

Conservation reserves include Tarra-Bulga National Park,the Gunyah Rainforest Reserve, Morwell National Park and the Mt. Worth State Park. Agnes Falls at Toora cascades over a series of rocks on a 59-metre drop is a well known waterfall.

The Ranges are very similar in formation and appearance to the Otway Ranges southwest of Melbourne.

Indigenous history

The eastern Strzelecki Ranges fall within the territory of the Gunai or Kurnai people and part of the western Ranges within the territory of the Bunurong nation. In the Aboriginal Boonwurrung language, the range is called Tolone. Stone axes, grinding stones and bush ovens provide evidence of Aboriginal use of the tall dense forests of the ranges. It is believed that Aboriginal people did not permanently occupy the wet forested mountain ranges because of uncertain food supplies and the harsh climate. During summer and spring short trips were common.

European explorers

Before permanent European settlement, the coast to the south of the Strzeleckis was visited by sealers and wattle bark gatherers, but they did not settle. Samuel Anderson (1803–1863), a Scottish immigrant from Kirkcudbright, agriculturist and explorer, established a squatter agricultural settlement on the Bass River in 1835, the third permanent settlement in Victoria (then called the Port Phillip District).

The first European to explore the Strzelecki Ranges was Angus McMillan, who came in search of pastures from New South Wales in 1839.

However, the Strzelecki Ranges are named after the Polish explorer, Paweł Edmund Strzelecki (also known as Paul Edmund de Strzelecki). In 1840, after climbing and naming Australia's highest mountain Mount Kosciuszko, he journeyed further south into Gippsland. Heading towards Port Phillip Bay, his party entered the north-eastern end of the Strzelecki Ranges and struggled through the rugged and thick forest for 22 days, before finally emerging starved and exhausted at Corinella on Western Port Bay.

Vegetation

left|thumb|300x300px|The Corrigan Suspension Bridge, [[Tarra-Bulga National Park]]

The eastern Ranges were originally covered by a mosaic of wet forest, dominated by 90-metre-tall mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) and cool temperate rainforest of myrtle beech and tree ferns. Drier mixed forest of messmate (Eucalyptus obliqua), peppermint (E. radiata) and mountain grey gum (E. cypellocarpa) were more common in the foothills of the western Strzeleckis.

In 1976, a monument was unveiled by the Hon Jim Balfour to the "World's Tallest Tree" near Thorpdale, which in 1881 was measured by a surveyor, George Cornthwaite, at 375 feet (114.3 metres) after it had been chopped down. This account was reported in the Victorian Field Naturalist many years later in July 1918 and is often considered the most reliable record of Victoria's tallest tree.

As a result of clearing for agriculture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and of some logging activity, the native vegetation of the overall Strzelecki Ranges bioregion is highly depleted, with only 19% of its original extent remaining, mostly in the east.

In west Gippsland near Warragul land settlement began from about 1862 while further south it was a bit later in 1870. People came from all points of the compass and spread out, with the final part being settled near the Tarwin Valley. Ahead of them was the Herculean task of clearing the giant trees and of trying to get their produce to market.

In winter, the roads degenerated and became boggy channels of mud. Corduroy tracks were built with small logs laid cross ways along the worst stretches. The Grand Ridge Road was built by the Country Roads Board in the 1920s, joining all the local north-south roads in one long east-west strip, but proved of little practical use. However, the road was progressively improved as a result of unemployment relief works during the Great Depression of the 1930s and was promoted as a tourist drive. The other hope was the timber industry but Melbourne's timber was adequately supplied from the Central Highlands until the mid-1950s. The project ran for over 60 years with fluctuations of investment but essentially ended with the creation of the Victorian Plantations Corporation in 1993. The company then proceeded to establish a plant at Maryvale in LaTrobe Valley for the manufacture of Kraft papers which came into production in October 1939.

Before the end of the Second World War, the Forests Commission began making additional plans to reforest and rehabilitate the Strzeleckis and establish a timber supply. It was joined in the venture by APM. The company announced the formation of a subsidiary company, APM Forests Ltd, in 1951 and planned an enormous reforestation scheme to supply softwood and hardwood pulp to the mill. They also began purchasing properties to establish plantations that would eventually supply the new mill. At that stage, softwoods were still being imported in large quantities and it was also believed that softwoods could not only relieve the pressure on native forests but make Australia self-sufficient in timber resources. So in the 1970s the Commission commenced major environmental studies in north-east Victoria into the effects of plantations. The studies included surveys of the biology of existing plantations compared to adjoining native forests as well as the impact of plantations on the catchment hydrology.

Subsequent Land Conservation Council reviews, beginning in the 1970s, restricted the areas of new softwood plantations on public land and by 1987 degraded farmland was being purchased for the PX program and the clearing of native forest halted.

The Black Saturday fire that began near Churchill on 7 February 2009 destroyed a large area of HVP plantation. The trees were quickly salvaged and replanted but it had significant flow-on effects to the continuity of wood supply for local harvesting contractors, sawmills and the papermill at Maryvale.

Tourism

The spectacular Grand Ridge Road which was built in the 1920s winds through the Ranges, and provides picturesque views to the north over the Latrobe Valley and to the south towards Wilsons Promontory.
The Grand Strzelecki Track was opened in May 2012 as a walking track over 100 km long from Billy's Creek to the Tarra Bulga National Park that can be completed in stages.
Agnes Falls near Toora is a spectacular waterfall that cascades over a series of rocks with a 59-metre drop, the highest single span waterfall in Victoria.
Tarra-Bulga National Park

Gallery

File:Morwell River 1913.jpg|CRB party at Morwell River 1913

File:Gunyah 1913.jpg|Mud at Gunyah – 1913

File:Pattinson Tree near Gunyah 1927.jpg|Local identity and axeman, Jack Pattinson cut 50 springboards and climbed to a height of 160 feet in 1927.

File:Landslide - Strzeleckis.jpg|Hillsides in high rainfall areas of the Strzelecki Ranges were prone to slumping after the native vegetation had been removed.

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References

External links

Map of Strzelecki State Forest (1975), Forests Commission Victoria – http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/139885
McHugh, Peter. (2025). Forests and Bushfire History of Victoria: The Working Forests, Volume 1.https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-4135792873/view Volume 2 - https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-4135792885/view