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Blah-Blah Bar / Re: General Discussions
Last post by LP -However, a common issue in these instances is removal of vegetation. Landscaping.
Same phenomenon seems to be the case at many locations along Nepean Highway, lucky bastards!
Personally, I'd prefer to be on Thry's side of the hill, looking at tree tops. I could never get into the glare coming from the sun setting over Handbaggerville at the end of a long summer's day.
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Blah-Blah Bar / Re: General Discussions
Last post by LP -I think the canons marked the entrance to a nursery full of pots and garden gnomes.
This photo would have been taken from the pinnacle of Dromana Foreshore Reserve, the end of the section of road that now has the breakwater and no beach.
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Blah-Blah Bar / Re: General Discussions
Last post by LP -Our family use to spend summer down there in the 1950s and 60s, see the canon on the left of the road, there use to be a bloke who sold crays straight out of the boiling drum / barrel at the spot and dad would always stop the Model T and buy one on the way past. You can just see in the distance Rosebud.
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Blah-Blah Bar / Re: General Discussions
Last post by DJC -Without seeing decent before and after photos (before as in regularly over the last decade) its hard to pinpoint an issue.
However, a common issue in these instances is removal of vegetation. Landscaping.
People want to remove 'unsightly' trees and install 'pretty' lawn and plants. In doing so, you are weakening the ground as the trees are basically holding it together. The pretty lawn and plants are surface layers only.
On top of that, you are probably watering your lawn and plants a lot more than your native trees who basically require nothing. That in turn can become an issue.
So i'd suggest that might be a contributing factor to what happened up the hill to contribute to all this.
Yes, removal of vegetation is a major factor in terms of loss of the stabilising action of large root systems and the siphoning of groundwater.
However, I think that interfering with the natural drainage by construction, utilities installation, landscaping, vegetation removal, etc is the killer, particularly when you’re starting with an unstable landform.
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Blah-Blah Bar / Re: General Discussions
Last post by ElwoodBlues1 -Without seeing decent before and after photos (before as in regularly over the last decade) its hard to pinpoint an issue.
However, a common issue in these instances is removal of vegetation. Landscaping.
People want to remove 'unsightly' trees and install 'pretty' lawn and plants. In doing so, you are weakening the ground as the trees are basically holding it together. The pretty lawn and plants are surface layers only.
On top of that, you are probably watering your lawn and plants a lot more than your native trees who basically require nothing. That in turn can become an issue.
So i'd suggest that might be a contributing factor to what happened up the hill to contribute to all this.
https://alysialts.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/mornington-peninsula-susceptible-to-landslide/
For those who like a bit of history... https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22762908
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Blah-Blah Bar / Re: General Discussions
Last post by kruddler -However, a common issue in these instances is removal of vegetation. Landscaping.
People want to remove 'unsightly' trees and install 'pretty' lawn and plants. In doing so, you are weakening the ground as the trees are basically holding it together. The pretty lawn and plants are surface layers only.
On top of that, you are probably watering your lawn and plants a lot more than your native trees who basically require nothing. That in turn can become an issue.
So i'd suggest that might be a contributing factor to what happened up the hill to contribute to all this.
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Blah-Blah Bar / Re: General Discussions
Last post by DJC -Yes, the Port Phillip Basin has extensive marine fossil beds and clay deposits but that's not the case at McCrae. Spring Hill, as it used to be known, is a granite landform with a veneer of unconsolidated sands and conglomerates, and, guess what; groundwater bubbling to the surface!
I'd love to know who the radicals are that try to claim the fossil beds are ancient Indigenous middens. There are extensive middens and occupation sites around the Bay, but they are well-known to be relatively recent. Indeed, the local Aboriginal people have an oral tradition that their ancestors hunted kangaroos and emus on plains that are now under the Bay. While the Bay originally formed around 10,000 years ago, research by Dr Guy Holdgate has demonstrated that it was dry land again from around 2,800 to 1,000 years ago. The "radicals" were quite chuffed to have their oral traditions verified by scientific research. They know that the shell middens now visible around the Bay generally date to shortly before the Bay dried up or after it filled again and have never claimed that the fossil deposits are cultural sites.
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Blah-Blah Bar / Re: General Discussions
Last post by LP -“So the question then becomes, what change have we done that has turned it from an old cliff and what would have been bush area when we developed it? I would be suspicious that there are old gullies that have been in-filled in that cliff face, and they’re going to funnel more water through.”
I talked to a engineer yesterday who does a bit of work in that area, we were talking about crooks stealing tools and stuff out of utes middle of the day, but I had to ask him about McCrae and he gave me a dumbed down answer. He said he did a bit of work around Mt Martha, Mornington and Mount Eliza. Apparently it's quite common in those areas to have a clay cap on top of ancient sea floor or shell filled deposits from past major events. ( Some radicals try to claim these shell rich layers are proof of ancient indigenous middens, but the shell filled layer is far far older than humans, in some areas can be metres thick and covers the huge percentage of the Peninsula. ) In some areas the clay cap is quite thin maybe a metre, in other areas it can been 10m thick. He said where the clay is thin it's common to dig through the various layers and find a sheet of continuously running water from springs or run off. I'm assuming McCrae would be similar. Interestingly, he said a huge contribution to the water problems lately is that since the pandemic the water authorities have not kept up servicing and maintenance of the storm water system, and now they are struggling to catch up with so many storm water drains blocked. Recommends people take a look at the storm water drains around their area and if blocked send a pic using the Snap Send Solve or things won't change, I suppose whingers are winners.
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Blah-Blah Bar / Re: General Discussions
Last post by DJC -David Kennedy, a professor in physical geography at the University of Melbourne, has spent 20 years studying erosion on Victoria’s coastline and says many of the houses on the McCrae hillside are built on an ancient sea cliff that is prone to erosion.
He says the area will always be vulnerable to landslides because the terrain is a mixture of hard granite and softer earth.
“It’s an area that probably shouldn’t be built on because it’s already quite steep, and it’s quite unstable.”
The hill is lined with old gullies where water has flowed towards the bay, Kennedy says. Many gullies would have been built on, forcing natural flows to find a new way to the water.
“So the question then becomes, what change have we done that has turned it from an old cliff and what would have been bush area when we developed it? I would be suspicious that there are old gullies that have been in-filled in that cliff face, and they’re going to funnel more water through.”