Gippsland Lakes
The Gippsland Lakes are a network of lakes and lagoons in east Gippsland in Victoria, Australia. The largest of them are called Lake Wellington ( in the Aboriginal language Gunai: Murla ), Lake King and Lake Victoria. Its tributaries are the Avon River, the Thomson River, Latrobe River, Mitchell River, the Nicholson River and the Tambo River.
Formation
The lakes created by two basic processes: the first is the deposition of alluvial sediments of the feeding rivers. The thus deposited silt forming narrow sandbanks, which may extend for miles in a lake inside, such as of the Mitchell River in Lake King. The second process is the flow in the Bass Strait, which has the Ninety Mile Beach and created as the river deltas separated from the open sea.
When the lakes were separated from the sea, began a new cycle in which the water level slowly rising in the lakes by the inflows until the water broke through the barrier of the Ninety Mile Beach and the water level plummeted back to sea level. Subsequently, the barrier closed again and the cycle began anew. Sometimes it takes many years until a new channel is created to the sea and it is not necessarily in the same place as the previous one.
1890 a wall was built that this natural canal between the lakes and the open sea on a certain spot, Lakes Entrance, specifies stabilized the water level in the lakes, creating a harbor for fishing boats on the lakes and allow boat traffic. This channel must be dredged regularly so that it does not silted up again, for seagoing vessels is too flat and begin the processes described above again.
Natural space
Live at the Gippsland Lakes plenty of wildlife and there are two national parks, the The Lakes National Park and Gippsland Lakes Coastal Park. The wetlands of the Gippsland Lakes are protected by the international Ramsar Convention on wetlands. They provide a habitat for about 20,000 seabirds, including those who come to Siberia or the North Pole. There are about 400 native plant species and 300 animal species. Three plant species - two of which are orchids - are also on the red list of threatened species such as two bird species, the Regent Honeyeater and Swift Parrot.
Individual lakes
The Gippsland Lakes consist of the following individual lakes: