Not long after the end of World War II, our family travelled across Bass Strait on the SS Taroona to visit relatives at Camperdown. The adventure began as I watched our nice, new Chev Stylemaster lifted up on slings then lowered into the ship’s 30-car hold. Wow! It was something else again for Dad, concerned lest someone mark the car’s shiny black lacquer.
Taroona wallowed her way across to Melbourne. The car safely survived the slings (and evident lack of arrows), and off we went, heading for the Stony Rises, an area of land around Lake Corangamite covered in a basaltic rock called scoria. Since settlement, locals had to remove rocks from paddocks to be able to farm. With no easy means of disposal, and with the need to fence properties, the rocks proved perfect for making drystone walls and fences. Most remain to this day.
That trip proved an eye-opener because I soon realised these rough-rock fences extended across the rural landscape as far as the eye could see. A couple of days later, I had the chance to see some of them from a height of 300-odd metres, which made for an adventure in its own right.
Slowly, and using mainly first gear, Dad and an uncle drove up the narrow gravel road winding around the flank of Mount Leura at Camperdown, all the way up to the trig point, hoping not to meet another car on its way down. There was no fence of any sort, just an uninterrupted view of the drop over the edge. It provided the buzz of a boys’ own adventure. I must note, too, there was no chance Mum would go with us!
Mount Leura is a partly collapsed volcanic mount, one of several in the district. The most famous of these is Mount Elephant near Derrinallum. It is a scoria cone that stands 240m high. When seen from the town it has the appearance of an elephant lying asleep on the ground, hence the name. Like all such cones, it was created by volcanic action around 180,000 years ago. Each stands above a vent in the underlying basalt crust.
Magma containing a high level of dissolved gas erupts outward through vents in the Earth’s crust. A pressure reduction as the molten material emerges causes gas to escape in the form of bubbles, thus creating the frequently porous stone we call scoria.
Scoria is a product with many purposes, including use as a good-draining base for roadworks. When my wife and I lived a few years in Bendigo in the late 1970s, we used scoria on our garden beds. There are several quarries through the district, but one in particular has achieved great fame – or notoriety.
Mount Elephant bears a gaunt scar on its western flank. This came about after a large amount of material had been removed. The mountain was in no mood for such madness and elected to slump downwards to fill the man-made void, opening that great horizontal scar! Attempts to stabilise the wound over the years have met with relatively little success, but in the meantime, tourists make their way along the Hamilton Highway to check out the amazing sight.
A few years ago, 68 years after going there with my parents, I did the trip all over again. I enjoyed it immensely, despite missing out on the excitement of a car sling – I drove my Pajero on and off a modern wallow-free passenger ferry – soon after driving up the now bitumised road on Mount Leura. Although it now ends short of the trig point, it remains narrow and unfenced.
All those years later, I managed to get a buzz, much as I did as a small boy.