Excursion 12: You Yangs Regional Park

Leaders: Barry Lingham, Bernie Lingham

The You Yangs Regional Park is now a highly popular natural area with many visitors from the Geelong and Melbourne regions. Popular activities include bird watching, walking, mountain bike cycling, rock climbing and picnicking. Historically, much of the park was turned over to timber plantations managed by the Forest Commission, but the prominent granite peaks remained as natural bushland.

This excursion explored a section of the park between the Parks Victoria Office and a large granite outcrop known as big Rock. Our group followed the well-marked trail, initially passing through plantation timber (Blue Gum, Sugar Gum, Red Ironbark and other eucalypts) with an understorey of Snowy Mint Bush and the wide-spread Boneseed that infests most of the park. Some chenopods such as Nodding Saltbush and Ruby Saltbush also survive in the granitic soils.

The flowering Sugar Gums attracted a range of birds including New Holland, White-plumed and Brown-headed Honeyeaters, plus Rainbow and Purple Crowned Lorikeets. Smaller bush birds seen included Grey Fantails, Spotted Pardalotes, Superb Fairywrens and a Scarlet Robin. Eastern Grey Kangaroos were noted moving through the woodland.

After climbing to the top of Big Rock, we were rewarded with extensive views of the region including Corio Bay, the Bellarine Peninsula, Geelong and the Brisbane Ranges. The geological history could be viewed, with the recent volcanic peaks of the Anakies, the Rowsley Fault forming the eastern boundary of the Brisbane Ranges, The Lovely Banks monocline and the areas around Batesford that were quarried for Miocene limestone. The granite rock we stood on was formed during the Devonian period. The Wadawarrung tribes used the basins on top of the rock as a source of water – several rock wells created by the Wadawurrung are found in the You Yangs.

We completed a loop walk of the rock and returned to the carpark. The sign at the start of the walk recommended about 1 hour to complete the loop but it took us 2.5 hours at field naturalist pace, stopping to look at all the flora, fauna and landscape features.