Title

Plate 1: Source of the Wannon. [by Eugene von Guérard].

Author

Author not identified

Source

[Not applicable]

Publication date

1868

Type

About the work

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

Plate 1: Source of the Wannon.

The Scene represented in the accompanying Engraving embraces no inconsiderable area of the County of Ripon, in the Western Districts of Victoria. The River takes its rise among the southern slopes of the rugged mountain chain known as the Serra Range, running north and south, in continuation of the Grampians, from Mount William to Mount Abrupt, which rises to an altitude of three thousand feet, and

“From out the plain

Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,

And on the curl hangs pausing.”

The Serra Range is about 150 miles distant from Melbourne, and rises abruptly from a vast level, lightly timbered with gum-tree and she-oak ; while the mountains themselves are covered, to a moderate elevation, with forests of stringy bark. Mount William is 4,500 feet above the plain. In the middle distance, and somewhat to the left of the spectator, is a deep cleft or fissure in the isolated mountain, which is clothed with timber to its very summit. This is locally known as Muirhead's Gap, and serves as a pass between the valley enclosed by the ranges and the lowlands stretching away to the south-east. Upon the verge of the horizon, faintly visible above its level line, the outline of Mount Rouse cuts the sky. This mountain is an extinct volcano, and about thirty miles distant from the sea coast. In the intervening plains are some of those lagoons which constitute so characteristic a feature of the Landscape Scenery in the West, and which are of so much value, for Pastoral purposes, to the Settlers.

Accompanying text, 1868.