About the Rubicon

The purpose of this section of the website is to help people to learn more about the Rubicon Forest, the valleys and the ranges. We want to attract people to come to the Rubicon; partly to enjoy the beauty but partly to see the damage which is being done by unsustainable logging and perhaps to add their voices to the protection of the Rubicon.

Geologies

The Rubicon State Forest sits on top of the remnants of a super-volcano whose eruptions were some of the biggest ever to occur on Earth. The volcano, the Cerberean Caldera, was active around 365 million years ago in the Devonian geological era. The original rim of the Cerberean Caldera was almost a circle about 27 km in diameter (see Landsat image). The eruptions occurred around the rim with the erupted volcanic rocks piling up on the floor of the caldera while it gradually sank as the volcano erupted and the magma chamber below emptied. The attached notes were prepared by Dr Bill Birch from the National Museum of Victoria for a tour of the area he conducted some years ago. A copy of the definitive paper on the origin of the volcano and the local geology which Dr Birch co-authored is also attached (4.5 mb). The RFPG hopes to develop an interpretive trail on the plateau that illustrates the geology of the area and also to conduct guided tours of rock exposures and landform features to give glimpses of the area’s amazing origins. For those interested in understanding more about Victoria’s volcanic past, the Royal Society of Victoria has published an excellent well-illustrated book by Dr Birch, Volcanoes in Victoria, which is available for $20 by contacting the Society.

Aboriginal peoples of North Central Victoria

The Taungurong people (part of the wider Kulin nation) are the traditional custodians of North Central Victoria. (See the IATSIS map of Indigenous Australia.) The Taungurong Clans Aboriginal Corporation is the recognised Aboriginal party (see VAHC) for this region (see RAP map).

"Coranderrk: We will show the country" by Giordano Nanni and Andrea James, Oct, 2013 published by IATSIS. Please see Chapter 1 (here) which provides a brief history of Coranderrk 1835-1881, and then buy the book (here)!

See Wikipedia entry on Taungurong people (also Wurundjeri for wider context). See also the brief history by Loraine Padgham (on Taungurong News, 2011). For a more detailed history see Barry Judd (2010) 'It's not cricket': Victorian Aboriginal cricket at Coranderrk.

Ecologies

Recent ecosystem accounting studies demonstrate show that the contribution of agriculture, water supply, tourism and plantation timber to the Central Highlands economy far outweighs that of native timber production. More here.

About LBP. See ANU fact sheet

The Barred Galaxia. See excellent piece on the barred galaxia published in eSplash192; extract here.

Victorian bioregions and ecological vegetation classes here. See EVC/Bioregion Benchmark for Vegetation Quality Assessment Highlands – Southern Fall bioregion.

See Arthur Rylah Institute research themes.

Histories

Timber tramways

See Peter Evans' video clip 'Rails to Rubicon' for a fascinating account of the timber tramways which were needed in the early 20th C to access the timber in the Rubicon Forest (before the days of clear fell logging). The video was subsequently converted into the book Rails to Rubicon : a history of the Rubicon Forest / by Peter Evans.Light Railway Research Society of Australia, 1994.