Late afternoon sun brings out the rich copper-gold of Kangaroo Grass on the banks of Lake Hume.
Intact native grassland is extraordinarily beautiful, but very, very rare. Take the Victorian Volcanic Plains as an example. The plains, which stretch from just outside Melbourne across towards the South Australian border, were stripped of their native vegetation within the first few decades of European settlement, and less than one percent of the original cover remains; nearly all of that in tiny strips and forgotten pockets: roadsides, railway reserves, and other places that have not been ploughed, sprayed with herbicide, or overgrazed. This is one of the reasons why bushfires are such a menace now: imported pasture grasses burn fast and hot: native grasses burn too, but at a lower and less dangerous temperature.