The Mallee

The Mallee is the most northwesterly district in the state of Victoria. Definitions vary, however all are based on the Victorian distribution of mallee eucalypts. These trees dominate the surviving vegetation through most of Mallee, except for swamps and areas along waterways, and the very rare stands of intact Casuarina.

The Mallee is, for all practical purposes, completely flat and very low-lying: in fact for long geological periods the whole region has been inundated by the ocean. Most of the Mallee consists of sand dunes that have been deposited as a result of movement of sand from the interior of Australia during arid glacial periods of the Quaternary. The soils are generally very infertile and sandy: the better ones on more stabilised sand dunes in the east are slightly loamy and pink to light brown and have been able to support wheat and barley growing as a result of the development of superphosphate and other fertilisers. In the west the soils are unconsolidated sands, much less alkaline than in the east, and not generally able to support any grain cropping.