Using seismology and drill cores, they will 'peel' back the surface layers to disclose an eerie, hidden landscape of undiscovered gold and mineral wealth, buried hills, valleys and fossil streams, giant extinct volcanoes and lurking environmental timebombs like salinity and dormant volcanoes.

The Victorian geotraverse is the largest project of its kind in Australian history � a full-scale attempt to probe into the titanic processes that shaped today's Victoria and formed the wealth that has powered its economic and social prosperity for almost two centuries.

It is also a vast test-bed for the technologies that will make the next generation of mineral discoveries across Australia, and pioneer the first generation of sophisticated environmental management and landscape-scale sustainable systems.

Twelve top earth science bodies plan to join hands with local and State government, industry and communities, to unlock hidden wealth, head off land degradation, create new regional jobs, industries and opportunities. They include the Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Environment, Geoscience Australia and the Co-operative Research Centre Landscape Environments and Mineral Exploration, and CSIRO.

"We won't actually cut the state in half, but we will take an imaginary cross-section of it and explore that in detail and in depth, to figure out things like where the rest of the gold deposits are or where the next salinity disaster might strike," explains CSIRO's Professor Neil Phillips, who is leading the project.

Victoria's famous rush contributed 2500 tonnes of gold � 2 per cent of all the gold ever mined in human history. But the chances are that less than a third of what was actually there has so far been dug up. Another 5000 tonnes may lie in hills and valleys, themselves concealed hundreds of metres beneath the flat and featureless sweep of the Murray river plains, like a chain of undersea mountains.

The story of Victoria' wealth begins some 400 million years ago, when 20 giant volcanoes � several of the scale of a Mount St Helens � blew their stack and carpeted the landscape in roiling pyroclastic cascades, flowing basalt and deep beds of ash. Hills rose, the earth folded, rivers flowed and were buried.

From this period of fume and fury � the hottest, most violent episode in Victoria's 600 million year history, says Prof Phillips � was also laid down wealth of the future: the gold that later enriched the people who came to live here, and the hills that slowly weathered into the bountiful soils of the Murray plain, sustaining Australia's most valuable agricultural region.

"It all happened in about 50 million years � and there's been nothing like it since, although there has been some milder volcanic activity over the last 5 million years in the western part of the State," he says, adding, "that's still not over, either. The last event was 7000 years ago."

"The hills that contain Victoria's gold-bearing quartz are 400 million years old. That enormous rock mass then tilted. From the south and center of the State, it plunges beneath the flat surface of the Murray plain � and we've every reason to believe that the gold they contain extends there too. Perhaps two thirds of it still lies underground, beyond our sight or powers of detection till now."

Salinity, till recently, was largely seen as a two-dimensional threat � a menace which just happened on the surface, or close to it. By peering underground using cutting-edge airborne survey tools like TEMPEST, scientists are starting to spot large 'pods' of saline water with potential to burst out onto the surface if handled wrongly, with lethal consequences for farms, rivers and native bush. Also they have 'unearthed' a complex network of buried rivers and drainage channels, sometimes running in completely different directions to those on the surface.

"This means, for example, that if you planted trees to stop water running down a hill slope into a saline soak below, you could still get it wrong if the salt is actually flowing in from somewhere quite different in the landscape along one of these buried palaeo-channels," Prof Phillips said.

"We need to be able to see the landscape in four dimensions � including depth and time � if we are to truly understand how it functions, and what we need to do to protect our agriculture and our environment."

Prof Phillips says the Victorian geotraverse is unique in the way it brings together scientists from a wide range of disciplines to gain an unrivalled understanding of how a landscape formed long ago, how it works today � and what we can and can't safely do within it.

The experiment will also be used to test CSIRO's famous Glass Earth technology � a combination of advanced sensing technologies able to "see" into the landscape to a depth of a kilometre or more. This technology is expected to become the mineral prospecting tool of choice for Australia � and potentially the world � over the coming decade.

The project will be presented at a geology conference, Victoria Undercover, being held in Benalla, Victoria 30 April � 2 May, 2002.

Related Links
CSIRO Exploration and Mining
SpaceDaily
Search SpaceDaily
Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only