Victoria’s Volcanic Plain

The expansive basalt plain in Victoria, Australia spreads westward from the state’s capital city of Melbourne and is notably one of the most extensive in the world. This south-western region of Victoria was home to more than 400 volcanoes which formed this plain from 4.5 million years ago. The gold-shaded area on the map below indicates its breadth.

 

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Bluestone Quarrying in Melbourne

 

In 1848 nine local stone quarries held annual licences in the County of Bourke. The durable dark blue-grey basalt or ‘bluestone’ as it was referred to, was resistant to weathering by water and made an ideal building material for the better warehouses and homes. Most of the material quarried in the late 1840s came from Collingwood, between Merri Creek and the Reilly Street sanitation drain ( known today as Queen’s Parade). The area then was described as bare, barren and stony, with a network of quarry holes to be found everywhere.

By 1850 the number of licensed quarry masters had risen to nineteen, each one employing between 6 and 8 men as labourers on the stone. Nearly thirty individuals and partnerships had opended quarries in and around Melbourne during this 2 year period. They wer: Brown & Ramsden, Alex Carnie, Robert Clowe, William Cogan, Michael Darcy, John Dodd, Drysdale & Groom, Dunstone & Roberts, Ham & Mitchell, William Harper, John Hunt, W.B. Kampf, Robert Lancaster, Jonathan Lilley, William Lilley, James Linacre, Morgan & Milne, Morrissy & Hoker, Mortimer, Christopher Mulhall, Pearce & Smith, Thomas Quin, Sharwick & Morgan, Benjamin Standering, L.J. Stephens, Alexander Sutherland, Thomas & Rosson, Trudgeon & Marshall, and Edward Wells.

These men were largely responsible for the building of early Melbourne. The work was dirty and heavy, conditions primitive and the equipment dangerous. Men worked a twelve to fourteen hour day, six days per week, in all weather.

 

 

Stone cutting machines were used in the 19th century for dressing bluestone, like this one from 1861 in the northern Melbourne suburb of Brunswick.

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