Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park

About

The Grampians National Park, commonly known as the Grampians, is a national park located in the Grampians region of Victoria, Australia. The Jardwadjali name for the mountain range itself is Gariwerd. The 167,219-hectare (413,210-acre) national park is situated between Stawell and Horsham on the Western Highway and Dunkeld on the Glenelg Highway, 260 kilometres (160 mi) west of Melbourne and 460 kilometres (290 mi) east of Adelaide. Proclaimed as a national park on 1 July 1984, the park was listed on the National Heritage List on 15 December 2006 for its outstanding natural beauty and being one of the richest Aboriginal rock art sites in south-eastern Australia. The Grampians feature a striking series of mountain ranges of sandstone. The Gariwerd area features about 90% of the rock art in the state.

At the time of European colonisation, the Grampians had a number of indigenous names, one of which was Gariwerd in the western Kulin language of the Mukjarawaint, Jardwadjali, and Djab Wurrung people, who lived in the area and who shared 90 per cent of their vocabulary.

According to historian Benjamin Wilkie, the name Gariwerd was first written down in 1841, taken from a Jardwadjali speaker by the Chief Protector of Aborigines, George Augustus Robinson, as Currewurt. From speakers of the Djab Wurrung language or Djargurd Wurrung language, to the east, he recorded "Erewurrr, country of the Grampians" – likely a mishearing of Gariwerd. Recorded variations on Gariwerd include Cowa, Gowah, and Gar – generic words for a pointed mountain. Dhauwurd Wurrung language speakers from the south-west coast of Victoria called the mountains Murraibuggum, while Wathawurrung (Wathaurong) speakers used the name Tolotmutgo.

In 1836, the explorer and Surveyor General of New South Wales Sir Thomas Mitchell named Gariwerd after the Grampian Mountains in his native Scotland. According to Wilkie, Mitchell first referred to Gariwerd as the Coast Mountains and, in July 1836, called them the Gulielmian Mountains after William IV of the United Kingdom ( Gulielmi IV Regis). Members of his expedition referred to the mountains as the Gulielmean, Gulielman, and the Blue Gulielmean Mountains. Later in 1836, Mitchell settled on Grampians, and the Grampians National Park took that name in 1984.

After a two-year consultation process, the park was renamed Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park in 1991, but that proved controversial and was reversed after the election of the Kennett government in 1992. The 1998 Geographic Place Names Act reinstated the dual naming of geographical features, and that has been subsequently adopted in the park, based on Jardwadjali and Djab Wurrung names for rock art sites and landscape features, with the Australian National Heritage List referring to "Grampians National Park (Gariwerd)".

This area is a distinct physiographic section of the larger Western Victorian Highlands province, which, in turn, is part of the larger East Australian Cordillera physiographic division — commonly known as the Great Dividing Range — a series of mountain ranges, plateaus and rolling hills forming out of the Wimmera plains just to the west of the Grampians, staying close to the east Australian coastline and extending 4,000 km (2,500 miles) to the north to Dauan Island in the Torres Strait off the northern tip of the Cape York Peninsula.

Left: View from the Balconies overlook into Victoria Valley. Right: View from Boroka Lookout with Halls Gap out of frame to left. The general form that the ranges take is: from the west, a series of low-angled sandstone ridges running roughly north–south. The eastern sides of the ridges, where the sedimentary layers have faulted, are steep and beyond the vertical in place - notably at Hollow Mountain near Dadswells Bridge at the northern end of the ranges.

The rock material that composes the high peaks is sandstone which was laid down from rivers during the Devonian period 425 - 415 million years ago. This sediment slowly accumulated to a depth of 7 kilometres (4.3 mi); this was later raised and tilted for its present form. [ citation needed ] A number of stratigraphic layers have been identified, such as the Silverband Formation, the Mount Difficult Subgroup and the Red Man Bluff Subgroup. The coarse grain and fine lamination of the Silverstone Formation, along with undulations at the surface, is thought to have been an estuarine backwater before becoming preserved around 400 million years ago.

The Southern Ocean reached the base of the northern and western edges of the mountain range about 40 million years ago, the deposition from the range forming the sea floor which is now Little Desert National Park. [ citation needed ]

The highest peak is Mount William at 1,167 metres (3,829 ft). Numerous waterfalls, such as Mackenzie Falls, are found in the park and are easily accessible via a well-developed road network. [ citation needed ]

Left: View from the Balconies overlook into Victoria Valley. Right: View from Boroka Lookout with Halls Gap out of frame to left. The general form that the ranges take is: from the west, a series of low-angled sandstone ridges running roughly north–south. The eastern sides of the ridges, where the sedimentary layers have faulted, are steep and beyond the vertical in place - notably at Hollow Mountain near Dadswells Bridge at the northern end of the ranges.

The rock material that composes the high peaks is sandstone which was laid down from rivers during the Devonian period 425 - 415 million years ago. This sediment slowly accumulated to a depth of 7 kilometres (4.3 mi); this was later raised and tilted for its present form. [ citation needed ] A number of stratigraphic layers have been identified, such as the Silverband Formation, the Mount Difficult Subgroup and the Red Man Bluff Subgroup. The coarse grain and fine lamination of the Silverstone Formation, along with undulations at the surface, is thought to have been an estuarine backwater before becoming preserved around 400 million years ago.

The Southern Ocean reached the base of the northern and western edges of the mountain range about 40 million years ago, the deposition from the range forming the sea floor which is now Little Desert National Park. [ citation needed ]

The highest peak is Mount William at 1,167 metres (3,829 ft). Numerous waterfalls, such as Mackenzie Falls, are found in the park and are easily accessible via a well-developed road network. [ citation needed ]

Due to being an exposed peak in the west of Victoria, Mount William features especially cool maximum temperatures throughout the year. Winter cloud cover is profound; with an extraordinary 26 days of precipitation in July, constituting an annual total of 215 days—quite possibly the highest figure of any site in mainland Australia.

Snowfalls are both frequent and heavy throughout the year. Daily maximum temperatures can struggle above the single digits even in summer, and on such days the afternoon and mid-day readings can be near to 0 °C (32 °F) in extreme cases such as in December 2022. The peak can be classed as a cold and moist Mediterranean climate ( Köppen Csb ) on account of the low summer rainfall − in February averaging only 32.2 millimetres (1.27 in) of rain.

The Silverband Formation (see Geology above) was the source of sandstone paving slabs used for the construction of a nearby Cobb & Co station in 1873. The surface of one paver contained 23 impressions, the tracks of a four-legged animal around 850 millimetres (33 in) in length, which have been described as the oldest trace of a vertebrate walking on land.

To the Jardwadjali and Djab Wurrung peoples, Gariwerd was central to the dreaming of the creator, Bunjil, and buledji Brambimbula, the two brothers Bram, who were responsible for the creation and naming of many landscape features in western Victoria.

Grampians National Park (Gariwerd) is one of the richest Indigenous rock art sites in south-eastern Australia and was listed on the National Heritage List for its natural beauty as well as its past and continuing Aboriginal cultural associations. Motifs painted in numerous caves include depictions of humans, human hands, animal tracks and birds. Notable rock art sites include:

- Jananginj Njani (Camp of the Emu's Foot)