Mount Eckersley

This information has been obtained from the report: Eruption Points of the Newer Volcanic Province of Victoria by Neville Rosengren. This report was published in 1994 and was prepared for the National Trust of Australia (Victoria) and the Geological Society of Australia (Victorian Division). The review of eruption points was based on an earlier unpublished manuscript Catalogue of the post-Miocene volcanoes of Victoria compiled by O P Singleton and E B Joyce (Geology Department, University of Melbourne 1970).

Location:	Bell’s Hill
	38 06 00S 141 38 30E (external link); 7221-4-1 (Milltown) 561831. 4 km N of Heywood. Oakbank Lane. Heywood

Land Tenure/Use:	Private land. Grazing and small disused quarry, little outcrop.
Type 10:	Other (composite scoria and tuff cone with lava flows).
	Mount Eckersley is an explosive scoria and tuff volcano with a well-defined elongate crater breached at the north-eastern end. It is the central and highest point of a group of 5 eruption points including Sugarloaf Hill. Yellow and brown tuffs with complex bedding structures are exposed in parts of the Mount Eckersley crater wall. The inner crater walls are eroded with shallow gullies and small landslips. On the north-eastern side are remnants of an earlier explosive crater with remnants of tuff exposed in the eroded crater wall. Good exposures of basalt underlying well-bedded tuffs occur in a disused quarry on the western side of Mount Eckersley. The lavas are quartz tholeiites, and this is one of the few known occurrences of this rock in the Newer Volcanics Province. The eruption sequences are complex and include lava flows succeeded by ash deposits. Final fissure lava flows were very extensive and caused diversion of the Crawford River.
	160 m; 115 m.
Regional:	This is one of the most complex intact eruption centres of the Portland district. It is one of the few known eruptions to produce quartz lava in Victoria and therefore is important in determining the magma evolution of this volcanic province.
Class 3:	The site should be retained in rural use to retain its significant features. Limited quarrying would not degrade the significant geological and geomorphological values.
References:	Coulson, A. 1941. The volcanoes of the Portland district. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria 53, pp. 394-402. Boutakoff, N. 1963. The geology and geomorphology of the Portland area. Geological Survey of Victoria Memoir 22. Ollier, C.D. & Joyce, E.B. 1964. Volcanic physiography of the Western Plains of Victoria. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria 77. pp 357-376.

Page top