Field trips, remember those? The days of packed lunches with soda cans wrapped in aluminum foil, mooning passing cars from the bus, wedgies being ditributed like pez and generally being elated to be anywhere but school. Well, I went on a three day field trip with my Hydrogeology class last month to North-western Victoria and it was everything I remembered it to be minus the soda cans wrapped in aluminum foil. I don't drink soda anymore you see. I'm trying to cut down. On the soda. So...no soda.
Not only that but it was a whirlwind of geological delights! Ok, we were excited anyway. Over the coarse of three days we saw: a gold mine, two ephemeral lakes causing local land salinization, the Wimmera River , Mount Arapiles (basically a large outcrop in the middle of a flat plain, which makes it look pretty dramatic), Mitre Lake, which has gypsum and halite precipitating at the surface, Lake Ratzcastle, which wasn't actually a lake at the time we saw it, a water bore (or 'well' as we say in the U.S., which luckily came with a good story or it might have been boring. Ha! Get it? Booooring?!) for the Town of Nhill, some gypsum flats where gypsum precipitates on the surface and since they can't do anything else with the land, they mine it, and several springs that have naturally carbonated water from igneous carbon dioxide deep underground, which we actually got to drink.
The best part is that I was in the car with Charles (the 70 yr. old Hydro-specialist/professor who knows EVERYTHING about hydrogeology in Victoria) and he gave us a running dialogue on what is happeneing around us at all times (hydrolgeologically speaking of course). Yes, that may sound boring and I can't really argue there....BUT, we're interested and Charles is cool enough to zip it when no one is listening and not take it personally. He also has a ton of great stories, such as being attacked with a screw driver, having a shotgun pointed in his face, getting chased by livestock, etc. It's still pretty rural here in Australia. Enough said.
Here are a few pics of the trip:
Here we all are on the Wimmera River getting a lecture on anthropogenically induced salinity from Tamie and Charles. Quick thing on salinity, the soils in Oz contain a lot of salts and solids. When people clear land (and they did and do!), the lack of trees and plants causes the water table to rise. The water that once got transpired by those plants now runs off to the groundwater. As the groundwater rises, it saturates the soil containing high salts and dissolves them, which causes the water to become saline. The more saline it becomes, the less useful it is. This is a HUGE problem here. Large areas of land are becoming salinized and unable to grow crops or grass for grazing livestock. Thus, we cover the topic quite a bit.
Here we are atop Mt. Arapiles. Ahh, the semi-arid landscape of Victoria!
This is a view of Mitre Lake (mostly dry at this time of year and covered with precipitated gypsum and halite) from Mt. Arapiles......
....and below is the Mitre Lake close up! We're all heading out to lookat some piezometers (mini version of a bore) used to monitor groundwater. Check out the wallaby tracks we found heading across the lake. A wallaby is like a mini-kangaroo.
Here is a broken down church (testament to being in the middle of nowhere). This is only 5 hours from Melbourne. I can only imagine what it's like in the middle of the red center!!
This is an ephirimal lake, which means it's only around part of the year. I thought it quite amussing to visit a lake that is currently a field. If you visit Australia, be sure to read up on where your visiting before you go. It would be a shame to show up here with swimming trunks and a jet ski in tow only to realize you should have brought trimming sheers and a lounge chair.
We stopped to look at a desolate roadside pumping station (exciting stuff!) and the horses from across the street ran over to see what all the fuss was. It must get lonely out here.
Stay tuned, later this month I have a field trip to Gippsland (east of Melbourne) with my River Management class! More pictures abound!
Here we all are on the Wimmera River getting a lecture on anthropogenically induced salinity from Tamie and Charles. Quick thing on salinity, the soils in Oz contain a lot of salts and solids. When people clear land (and they did and do!), the lack of trees and plants causes the water table to rise. The water that once got transpired by those plants now runs off to the groundwater. As the groundwater rises, it saturates the soil containing high salts and dissolves them, which causes the water to become saline. The more saline it becomes, the less useful it is. This is a HUGE problem here. Large areas of land are becoming salinized and unable to grow crops or grass for grazing livestock. Thus, we cover the topic quite a bit.
This is a view of Mitre Lake (mostly dry at this time of year and covered with precipitated gypsum and halite) from Mt. Arapiles......
Here is a broken down church (testament to being in the middle of nowhere). This is only 5 hours from Melbourne. I can only imagine what it's like in the middle of the red center!!
This is an ephirimal lake, which means it's only around part of the year. I thought it quite amussing to visit a lake that is currently a field. If you visit Australia, be sure to read up on where your visiting before you go. It would be a shame to show up here with swimming trunks and a jet ski in tow only to realize you should have brought trimming sheers and a lounge chair.
We stopped to look at a desolate roadside pumping station (exciting stuff!) and the horses from across the street ran over to see what all the fuss was. It must get lonely out here.
