One intriguing feature of Arn Tolsma’s Connecting Country talk on August 27 [see our post], was his reference to the 1853 Selwyn map. It’s quite an aborbing exercise to pore over this map and line it up against the landscape of 2011.
Click here to download map.
Apart from some puzzling omissions [the Muckleford area is largely blank], landscape presented on the map sits interestingly alongside the one we can see today. In the case of the Tarilta creek and Porcupine ridge, for example, the descriptions ‘grassy gully’ and ‘bold rocky scrubby ranges with stringybark and box destitute of pasture’ remain broadly accurate.
Some background to the map, and how it came to be produced by the Victorian Colony’s first geologist, can be found here .
POST SCRIPT 2013: For our review of the 2013 Bendigo exhibition of the map click here.
Click on image for info/order page
Click on image for info/order page
Click on image for info/order page
