Port Phillip Survey 1957-1963

 Port

Phillip Conservation Council Inc.

A0020093K 

Victoria

Excerpts from
the ‘Port Phillip Survey 1957-1963’

by

the National
Museum
of Victoria
(Mem. nat. Mus. Vict. 27-1966)

Click

on a blue hyperlink of interest.

INTRODUCTION 

• Port Phillip Bay
  was discovered on 5th January, 1802,
  by LieutenantJohn Murray, RN

  , in the Lady
  Nelson. Murray
  named the bay Port King after GovernorKing

  of New South Wales,
  who later renamed it Port Phillip in
  honour of his predecessor, GovernorPhillip

  .

• Theentrance to the bay is restricted in
  depth by two rocky banks of dune
  limestone. The 200 m wide main
  shipping channel passes over the outer
  Rip Bank and the inner Nepean Bank
  This channel has been deepened by
  blasting, over the past 60 years, from
  a least depth of 10 m to its present
  declared minimum depth of 16 m.
  Between the two rocky banks lies a
  gorge with depths exceeding 100 m,
  while south of Rip Bank the depths
  increase to approximately 30 m some
  1500 m offshore. The strong tidal flow
  through the irregular constricted
  entrance produces the race, which is
  known as ‘The Rip’.

THE
GEOLOGY AND GEOMORPHOLOGY 

• Port Phillip Bay
  on the South Central Victorian coast,
  is located in a tectonically
  controlled depression or sunkland,
  bounded by two major faults, Selwyn’s
  Fault on the east and the Rowsley
  Fault on the west.

• Selwyn’sFault trends north-north-easterly with
  downthrow on the north-west, and
  controls the northern margin of the Mornington
  Peninsula
  horst. The south-eastern part of Port
  Phillip Bay occupies the fault-angle
  depression formed on the downthrown
  side of the fault that cuts across the
  Nepean
  Peninsula
  from near Cape Schanck
  to Dromana. It extends north towards Frankston,

  on the seaward side of
  the Mt.
  Martha
  an Mt. Eliza
  grandiorites (Keble, 1950; Thomas and
  Baragwanath, 1950). Palaeozoic rocks
  are sheared near the fault contact and
  Tertiary sediments are warped in the
  area. Continuation of seismic activity
  to recent time was established by an
  earthquake in 1932 with the epicentre
  near Mornington on the line of the
  fault (Holmes 1933).

• The
  Rowsley Fault, which controls the
  western margin of the sunkland,
  commences 16 km west of Geelong and
  continues north-north-easterly for
  approximately 50 km to north of
  Bacchus Marsh. The uplifted western
  block, now being dissected by
  rejuvenated streams, forms the Brisbane
  Ranges,
  which rise in places to 230 m above
  the sunkland.

• In
  addition to the two major structures,
  several subsidiary structures
  contribute to the present outline of
  the Bay. Near Geelong
  in the south-west, the Lovelybanks
  Monocline runs north for 13 km between
  Corio Bay
  and the Rowsley Fault, then trends
  south-west towards The Anakies.

• Eastof Geelong, along the southern shores
  of Corio
  Bay,
  the Curlewis

  Monocline controls the
  northern edge of the Bellarine
  Peninsula
  horst, where Miocene limestones and
  clays are warped down to the north and
  pass beneath the floor of Corio
  Bay
  (Coulson, 1933).

• The
  south-eastern margin of the Bellarine
  Peninsula
  is controlled by the Bellarine Fault.

• In
  the north, the Beaumaris Monocline
  forms a north-easterly trending
  structure with downthrow on the
  south-east and uplift on the
  north-west. It is expressed in cliffs
  near Beaumaris where Pliocene
  ferruginous sandstones are warped into
  a dome near Rickett’s Point. This
  structure controls the coastal
  indentation from Rickett’s Point to
  Mentone and Mordialloc. On the
  upthrown side, resistant sandstones
  form the cliffed headlands at Ricketts
  Point, while on the downthrown side
  Quaternary and Recent deposition has
  occurred at Mordialloc, Carrum and
  Frankston.
• Evidencefrom coasts throughout the world has
  clearly established the significance
  of the post-glacial rise in sea level
  that commenced approximately 18,000
  years ago when sea level was some 100
  m lower than at present (Shepard,
  1961; Fairbridge, 1961). The rise to
  near its present position has flooded
  river valleys, estuaries and lowlands
  in many parts of the world. In
  Victoria, both Port Phillip Bay and
  Western Port Bay (Fig. 1) owe their
  present outlines to the combined
  effects of tectonic movements that
  formed the sunklands, and the
  post-glacial eustatic rise that later
  flooded them.

*
* * * * * * * * *

Pages
119-124

MEM. NAT.
MUS. VICT. 27-1966

PORT PHILLIP
SURVEY 1957-1963.

VEGETATION.

By
J. H. WILLIS,

Assistant

Government Botanist, National Herbarium of
Victoria.

SUMMARY

A brief historical
account is given of the botanical
collections, followed by discussion of
the vascular flora and mosses living
within the marine influence. This
encompasses terrestrial and salt-marsh
vegetation and submarine angiosperms.
Lists of species and appropriate
literature references are appended.

INTRODUCTION

Except for some
historical references, the present
account is concerned only with
indigenous vascular plants and mosses
that occur either in the water or along
the bounding coastline of Port Phillip a
lineal distance of approximately 152
miles. The marine algae form the subject
of a separate paper by a specialist in
this group. If Bay-side vegetation be
limited to those plants growing only
within the influence of salt water
(including high tides and driven spray),
then the vascular flora would barely
exceed 120 species, but a strip of land
one mile wide all around the shore would
embrace representatives of at least 550
species.

COLLECTORS AND
INVESTIGATORS

No plant had been
seen by white men on the terrain that is
now Victoria
before George Bass
landed at Wilson’s Promontory
in January, 1798, and James Grant
visited Western Port
in March, 1801, but there is a lack of
evidence that either party collected
botanical specimens. However, within
four months of John Murray’s
discovery of Port
Phillip Bay, on 5th
January, 1802, Captain Matthew Flinders
also sailed through The Heads
accompanied by a botanical genius, Robert Brown.

During the week that
H.M.S. INVESTIGATOR
surveyed the southern parts of Port
Phillip, Brown made the second recorded
collection of Victorian plants. For the
first collection credit must go to the
French botanist, M.Leschenault de la
Tour, who spent several
days at Western Port
with Captain Emmanuel Hamelin’s party on
LE NATURALISTE at the beginning of
April, 1802, thus forestalling the
discoveries of the Englishmen in Port
Phillip by only a few days. Leschenault
was impressed by the fertile appearance
of the Western Port
coasts, but said: “The number of plants
which I gathered is not great.” Robert
Brown ascended Arthur’s Seat (27th
April, 1802), and examined the
vegetation of Point Nepean
peninsula, but was not present when
Flinders and three crewmen climbed
Station Peak (You Yangs)
on May 1st. Brown returned to Port
Phillip for another week’s botanizing
early in 1804, and he left for Hobart on
the LADY
NELSON (27th January)
with the last party of evacuees from Lieutenant David
Collins’s unsuccessful
attempt to establish a settlement near
Sorrento. It was unfortunate that
Brown’s only two sojourns on Victorian
soil – both brief – should have been
during summer and late ran autumn when
floral activity was at a minimum; but
among his trophies on the latter
occasion was the showy Blue Pincushion (Brunonia

australis) in a new
monotypic genus bearing the Latinized
form of the great collector’s name.
While the full extent of these earliest
Victorian plant collections remains
unknown, there is evidence that Brown
either gathered in from or noted about
100 species at Port Phillip; the type
material of eighteen new species was
involved, and his actual specimens of no
less than 23 Port Phillip species are
housed in the National Herbarium of
Victoria (at South Yarra).

Neither surveyor Charles Grimes,
who discovered the Yarra River
(January, 1803), nor Hamilton Hume
and William Hovell,
who trekked overland from near Albury to
Corio Bay
(November-December 1824), made any plant
collections. But Ronald Gunn
collected during “a short visit to the
south coast of New Holland in March,
1835” and in 1842 he published some
observations on the flora of Geelong
district based on 100 species, of which
only the genera are listed completely.
This, apparently, was the first
reference published in Australia
to the plant-life of the Port Phillip
region. James Backhouse,
a visiting Quaker missionary, spent ten
days in and around Melbourne
during November, 1837; his narrative
(published in 1843) certainly refers to
several trees noted near the Yarra
River
mouth, but his contribution to early
Victorian botany was negligible.

In the early 1840’s Charles Joseph La Trobe,
Superintendent of the Port Phillip District and
founder of Melbourne’s

Royal Botanic Gardens,
interested himself in the local flora.
Specimens of at least fourteen species
that he gathered on the heathlands
between Melbourne
and Brighton are now represented in the
Neuchatel Herbarium,
western Switzerland.
Also, between 1840 and 1855 an early Melbourne
settler, F. M. Adamson, sent plant
specimens to Sir William Hooker
at Kew, England;
some were from the shores of Port
Phillip. In 1851 Daniel Bunce
published a list of 201 species of the
Victorian flora, including many from
Port Melbourne, Brighton
and other parts of the Bay.

Up until 1852,
virtually all botanical (and other)
collections had been taken out of the
Colony to museums overseas; but the
arrival from Adelaide, in August that
year, of Dr. Ferdinand J. H.
Mueller ushered in a new
era for phytological research. Bringing
with him a large private herbarium of
European and South Australian
collectings, also a useful reference
library, young Mueller received the
appointment of first Colonial Botanist
on 26th January, 1853. Thereafter he
threw himself into a survey of the
country’s flora with such zeal and
efficiency that, within a decade, little
remained anywhere for succeeding
botanists to discover.

By 1861 this
phenomenal man had built up in Melbourne
a herbarium of l60,000 specimens that
was long to remain the largest by far in
the southern hemisphere. During 1862
appeared the first (and only complete)
volume of his elaborate, illustrated
PLANTS INDIGENOUS TO THE COLONY OF
VICTORIA; a few species were quoted as
from Port Phillip. In April, 1863 after
just ten years in the Victorian Public
Service, Mueller claimed that “the
botanical Investigation of the territory
of our colony is now nearly completed”;
and of course his investigation included
most of the species now known to occupy
the coasts of Port Phillip. Up to the
1880s botanical inquiry in Victoria
became almost synonymous with Mueller’s
own activity in field and herbarium.

Of the very few other
workers during the 25 year period
1853-78, mention may be made of Samuel
Hannaford who brought out (1856) a
catalogue of the Colony’s commoner
plants, and of Fanny A. Charsley whose
58 lithographic plates of Melbourne
wildflowers in colour (1867) contained
several undoubtedly coastal species,
three being exclusively so.

G. H. Adcock’s
“Census of indigenous plants of the
Geelong District” (1897), was probably
the best attempt, until then, at a local
flora in the Colony – with the possible
exception of D. Sullivan’s “Native
Plants of the Grampians and Vicinity”
which ran as a series through volumes 2
and 3 (1882-83) of the SOUTHERN SCIENCE
RECORD, but which listed only
ORCHIDACEAE among the monocotyledons. Dr.

C. S. Sutton broke new
ground in 1911 and 1912 by publishing
the first ecological account of a major
plant formation on the Bay-side: his “Notes on the
Sandringham Flora” gave a
detailed and informative account of
Greater Melbourne’s heath formation,
with complete list of constituent
species. In 1916 appeared Sutton’s
complementary and equally valuable
contribution, “A Sketch of the Keilor
Plains Flora”; this covered the basaltic
terrain bounding the western side of the
Bay. Both papers were published through
the VICTORIAN
NATURALIST, and drew
attention to the alarming rate at which
these tracts of vegetation were then
disappearing. A warning of what was to
come had already been sounded 30 years
before by an anonymous writer in the
SOUTHERN SCIENCE RECORD (Vol. 2, June,
1882):

“Ominous
signs of advancing settlement present
themselves daily. Great notice-boards
announcing sales of large areas,
surveyors’ pegs, landmarks and re
snobbishly-worded notices regarding
trespassers, all justify the
conviction that the once famous
Brighton heath-grounds will shortly
become a thing of the past. The
collector will therefore do well to
keep what specimens he finds … in a
few years these districts will be to
the collector as a sealed book.”

T. S. Hart’s
close acquaintance with the plant-life
of Port Phillip is evident in several
other papers to the Victorian
Naturalist, notably on the protective
value of coastal plants (1914) and a
survey of the original extent of Yellow
Box, Eucalyptus melliodora,
near Melbourne
(1939). In Professor A. J. Ewart’s
long-awaited FLORA OF VICTORIA (1931)
sundry species are ascribed to the sandy
heathlands and basalt plains adjoining
Port Phillip. The latest and most
advanced treatment of the vascular
vegetation has been Dr. R. T. Patton’s
series of four important ecological
studies – Cheltenham
flora, coastal sand dunes, basalt plains
and salt marsh – published between 1933
and 1942.

Meanwhile, the marine
algae were not being neglected. The
eminent philologist, Professor W.H. Harvey
of Trinity
College,
Dublin,
spent four months in Victoria between
August, 1854, and January, 1855, his
chief collecting places on Port Phillip
being at Brighton, Geelong
and Queenscliff. These localities appear
among others in the five volumes of his
monumental PHYCOLOGICA AUSTRALICA
(1858-1863). S. Hannaford
also collected some algae at Queenscliff
and around Geelong
between 1857 and 1863. During this
period Mr. H.Watts provided observations
and details of new species for Harvey’s

works and continued to investigate Port
Phillip seaweeds into the 1880’s, giving
a number of algal lectures to the
Victorian Field Naturalists Club of
which he was an early president.

Dr. J. Bracebridge
Wilson who organized the collection of
marine specimens for the biological
survey of Port Phillip, from its
inception in 1888 until his death in
1895, was an assiduous algologist; his
dried material at Melbourne Herbarium
spans the period 1879-95, and most of it
came from near The Heads. Wilson’s chief
literary contribution was “A Catalogue
of Algae collected at or near Port
Phillip Heads and Western Port”’

(1892). Phycological researches were
further advanced by H.T.Tisdall
(1898 and 1900) and Profesor A.H.S.Lucas
(1919 and 1931), while H.B.S.Womersley
(1956, &c.) has more lately
published numerous articles in which the
seaweed flora of Port Phillip is
involved.

R.A.Bastow gathered
bryophytes and lichens – now in
Melbourne Herbarium – from the Bay-side
coasts at the turn of last century
(1892-1905), while Dr. Ethel McLennan
and Sophie Ducker
have done pioneering work (1956) among
the smaller soil fungi of heathlands.

MAJOR PLANT
COMMUNITIES

Plates I –II

The geological
formations of the Port Phillip
shore-line are varied, (including as
they do beach sand, dunes, calcareous
eolianite cliffs, fluviatile sand
(sometimes impregnated with iron and
consolidated, forming bluffs where
eroded by the sea), granite headlands,
stony basalt plains and depositions of
river alluvium. The rainfall varies from
less than 17 inches per annum near
Little River in the central-western
sector of the Bay to 30 inches at
Dromana in the south-east. Such
diversity in climate and soil-types is
reflected in the physiognomy and
composition of the flora from place to
place: there is grassland, woodland or
open forest, heath, salt-marsh, also
smaller aquatic, rheophytic, dune and
cliff communities.

By far the two most
extensive formations were the heath on
deep fluviatile sand, stretching along
the whole eastern coast from the mouth
of the Yarra to Sorrento, and the
grassland of the drier western basalt
plains (between Newport and Geelong).
Both have been discussed in detail by
Patton (1933 and 1935).

The typical open
heath, of ericoid shrubs in many plant
families, blended often with a woodland
in which the prevailing tree was a
stunted form of Eucalyptus viminalis
(the variety racemosa, principal
food-plant of koalas near the coast). E. ovata
was frequent on wet flats, accompanied
by

E. camaldulensis
with increasing clay content in soils
marginal to the heathland; extensive
swampy areas, as at Carrum, were
dominated by dense thickets of the
paperback, Melaleuca ericifolia,
with associate aquatic herbs. There is
evidence that the tea-tree, Leptospermum lævigatum
(Pl. 1, fig. 1), an attractive and
characteristic coastline tree all along
the eastern side of Port Phillip, has
been invading some areas of open
heathland and reducing the species
composition. In association with Banksia integrifolia,
Acacia longifolia
(var.), Styphelia parviflora
and Myoporum insulare,
it may frequently form a closed canopy,
overhung by such creepers as Tetragonia implexicoma
and Clematis microphylla
and providing bower-like habitats for a
few tender shade-loving species.
(including corticolous bryophytes and
lichens, also fungi).

VEGETATION

The heath proper was
extremely rich in species, notably in
the orchid, wattle, pea and epacrid
groups, its facies at flowering time
(July to October) recalling the
colourful display of a West Australian
sand-plain. Unfortunately this very
attractive belt of vegetation, so
interesting to the botanist, has been
all but exterminated through suburban
housing, draining of swamps, and
agricultural developments. The few
inadequate and pathetic selvages that
remain are being inexorably ruined by
aggressive weeds that thrive on
disturbed ground (e.g., alien species of
Briza, Ehrharta, Watsonia,
Phytolacca, Oxalis, Salpichroa,
Coprosma, Senecio and Chrysanthemoides).

The basalt grasslands
on the western side have also been
profoundly altered through grazing,
building operations and the influx of
numerous weeds, (e.g., Avena,
Bromus, Diplotaxis, Trifolium, Lycium,
Arctothcca, Cynara, Tragopogon and
many other members of Compositæ). This
tract of grassland was quite deficient
in shrubs and very much poorer in
species than the heath, to which it
formed a striking contrast – the two
formations were separated by salt-marsh
and riparian scrub at the mouth of the
Yarra.

Small occurrences of
mangrove (Avicennia marina)
accompanied the halophytic vegetation
under tidal influence in Swan Bay and at
the mouth of Kororoit Creek (near
Seaholme), but Avicennia was
virtually destroyed at the latter place
by a thick deposit of oil discharged
into the Bay about June, 1950 – see
comments by Willis (1951), and Fawcett
(1951). Dominants of the saline marsh
(pl. I, fig. 2) are chiefly members of
the Chenopodiaceae (viz.,
succulent species of Arthrocnemum,
Salicornia and Suaeda), but Disphyma
(pl. II, fig. 1), Frankenia,
Wilsonia and Selliera may
each form extensive almost pure
societies. This formation keeps
remarkably free of weeds, Atriplex
hastata being one of the few
successful alien intruders. Patton has
dealt with the coastal salt-marsh “in
extensor” (1942) , and also with the
sand dune flora (1935) – a pioneer
community of relatively few hardy
species and some weeds (e.g., Lagurus,

Melilotus, Arctotis. Marram Grass
(Ammophila arenaria) has been
deliberately planted on some unstable
dunes to prevent sand drift.

Even more limited is
the strand flora on beach sand within
the influence of high tides. Only about
seven species are concerned in this
zone, the most interesting component
being probably Coast Spinifex or Silver
Grass (Spinifex hirsutus)
(Pl. II, fig. 2) which sends its robust
cord-like rhizomes for yards across the
bare sand. Sea Wheat-grass, Agropyron

junceum, is an introduction that
occasionally serves to stabilize sand
washed by high tides; it has been noted
at Beaumaris, Seaholme, St. Leopards and
Queenscliff. Atriplex
cinerea and two
species of Cakile (Sea Rocket)
have a remarkable capacity for rapid
colonization of loose beach sand.

The cliffy sections
of the Bay exhibit a varied assortment
of shrubs and herbs, some being confined
to such habitats as are within reach of
blown spray, e.g., Alyxia buxifolia
and Calocephalus brownii.
(Pl. II, fig. 2.) Many plants encroach
onto sea-cliffs from the surrounding
formations, notably heathland; and it is
sometimes difficult to decide whether a
particular species is to be regarded as
an intruder or a natural component of
the cliff flora. Some eucalypts and
acacias are undoubtedly intruders,
although they may reach the cliff-edge –
perhaps through natural erosion by the
sea. Probably the rarest among Port
Phillip’s cliff-dwellers is Lasiopetalum baueri,
of which only two old bushes are now
known to survive (at Red Bluff, Sandringham).

*
* * * * *

List D (Dunes and
sea-cliffs (68 species):

The 15 species below
are those from List D that seem to
be  most characteristic of heath
areas.

Lepidosperma
gladiatum

Coast Sword-sedge

Lomandra
longifolia

Spiny-headed Mat Rush

Dianella
revoluta

Black-anther Flax Lily

Acianthus
reniformis

Mosquito Orchid

Calidenia
latifolia

Pink Fairy Orchid

Pterostylis
cucullata

Leafy Greenhood Orchid

Clematis microphylla

Small-leaved Clematis

Pultenea
tenuifolia

Bush-pea

Kennedia prostrata

Running Postman

Pelargonium

australe

Austral Stork’s Bill

Lasiopetalum
baueri

Slender Velvet-bush

Dichondra

repens

Kidney-weed

Solanum laciniatum

Kangaroo Apple

Lobelia alata

Angled Lobelia

Olearia ramulosa

Twiggy Daisy-bush

References:
(Selected examples only appear here)

Audus, J. W. 1933.
Excursion to Frankston.  Vict.
Nat.  50:  172

Daley,
C.,     1920.
Excursion to Rosebud.   Vict.
Nat.  37: 23-27

Patton, R. T. 1933.
Ecological Studies in Victoria, Part I. (The Cheltenham
Flora)  Proc. Roy.
Soc. Vict. new ser.  45:

205-218

Sutton, C. S. 1911.
Notes on the Sandringham
flora.  Vict. Nat. 28: 5-20

Sutton, C. S. 1912.
Supplementary notes on the Sandringham
flora.  Vict. Nat. 29:
79-96

Tisdall, H. T. 1900.
Excursion to Blackrock.  Vict. Nat.
16:  183-84

Willis, J.
H.   1945  Excursion to
Beaumaris (regeneration of plants on
fire area).  Vict. Nat. 61:
162-63

***************

Last

updated on 2000-04-16:  www.vicnet.net.au/~phillip