THE 



^ictovxan statural isrt. 



Vol. VIII.— Nos. 2-3. JUNE- JULY, 1891. Nos. 90-91. 



A VISIT TO LAKE NIGOTHORUK AND THE MOUNT 

 WELLINGTON DISTRICT, GIPPSLAND. 



By a. W. Howitt, F.G.S., A. H. S. Lucas, M.A., B.Sc, 

 AND Arthur Dendy, D.Sc, F.L.S. 



i^Read before the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, ^th Ftbfuary, 



1891.) 

 It is now pretty generally known that there is a mountain lake in 

 North Gippsland, sheltered and hidden by the spurs and hills 

 around Mount Wellington. This lake was unknown even to the 

 blackfellows until somewhere about fifty years ago, when two 

 natives of the Welwenduk tribe came upon it while in search of 

 wombats. The district claimed as its particular and private 

 hunting and foraging ground by each of the Gippsland tribes was 

 defined by the watersheds between the different rivers. Thus, 

 the Bundaurat tribe owned all rights of the Macallister basin, 

 including the basin of the Wellington, which is a tributary. The 

 Nigothoruk (Wellington Mountain) blacks claimed the neigh- 

 bouring valley on the east, that of the Avon and its tributaries, 

 which drain tlie plains over Mount Wellington. It was the 

 Welwenduk division of this tribe, which occupied the lower Avon, 

 to which "Billy "and his father, the discoverers of the lake, belonged. 

 They observed that while a stream ran down into the lake from the 

 plains belonging to the upper division of their tribe, there was no 

 communication to be seen between the lake and the Wellington 

 River and territory of the Bundaurat. They accordingly annexed 

 the lake as very properly belonging to them, and made use of it 

 until the time when, early in the fifties, the native police raided 

 the Gippsland blacks and ejected them from their various lands. 



No white man had seen the lake until in 1886 a stockman 

 named Snowden, working up the Wellington valley, saw the lake 

 from the top of a spur, visited it, and made known its existence. 



In the same year Mr. Howitt made a first attempt, with old 

 Billy as a guide, to reach this " big fellow waterhole what creek 

 go in and never come out again." They tried first to 

 follow the ridge between Ben Cruachan Creek and the Avon 

 River, but were forced back by bad weather. They twice after- 

 wards endeavoured to force a way along the Mount Angus Range, 

 on the east side of the Avon, but the country was so rugged that 

 a horse's shoe was pulled off, and the explorers had to return 

 as best they could. The horse was lame for three months after- 



