Geology of Victoria

Victoria is an Australian state, situated at the southern end of the Great Dividing Range. The Great Dividing Range stretches along the east coast of the continent and terminates near the Victorian city of Ballarat west of the capital Melbourne, though the nearby Grampians may be considered to be the final part of the range. The highest mountains in Victoria (just under 2,000 m) are the Victorian Alps, located in the northeast of the state.

The northwest of the state is mostly Cainozoic rocks while the southeast is primarily made up of Palaeozoic rocks. There have been no discoveries of Precambrian rocks in Victoria.

The low flat northwest of the state that borders the Murray River was once the bed of an ancient sea and the land is much afflicted with salinity. Saline drainage from Victorian land is one of the sources of the salinity problem in the Murray-Darling River system. Commercial salt evaporation is undertaken near Swan Hill.

Central and western Victoria comprise world-class vein-hosted gold deposits, hosted mostly in the extensive Ordovician turbidites.

The southeast of the state has enormous brown coal fields.

There is an area of extensive volcanism in central and southwestern Victoria, where there are numerous volcanoes and volcanic lakes. The Western Victorian Volcanic Plains are the third largest in the world after the Deccan in western India, and the Snake River Plateau in Idaho, United States. The most recent volcanic activity was at Mt Eccles, which last erupted a few thousand years ago, making it an active volcanic region. Large basaltic lava flows are present on the western side of Melbourne and in the southwest of the state.

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