Eastern Mallee |
The Wimmera |
Limestone Coast |
Volcanic Plains |
Mid-west |
Northern plains |
Volcanic Uplands |
The Great Victorian Volcanic Plain stretches from the western suburbs of Melbourne almost to the South Australian border. It is one of only a handful of Australian regions with reasonably fertile soil. It has always been a mixture of grassland and grassy woodland with very few trees and a huge variety of native wildflowers. For this reason, the Volcanic Plain was settled by graziers very early on. They did not need to laboriously clear the land, they could simply occupy a stretch of it (illegally in most cases) and move a mob of sheep on to it. The consequences were dire: today less than 0.2% of the original cover of Plains Grassland and Plains Grassy Woodland remains.