The Entrance
The natural entrance to the lakes was unreliable and often dangerous. After much agitation, work began in 1872 to cut an artificial entrance, west of the natural entrance. Work on the "New Entrance" proceeded slowly and in 1876 was abandoned. Sir John Coode, renowned harbour engineer, advised on improvements but work did not resume until the early 1880s. In 1889, the new entrance was prematurely opened when a severe storm broke through the remaining sand hills. The natural entrance quickly silted up.The Silt Jetties
The Mitchell River Silt Jetties are an unusually long, thin landform in the Gippsland Lakes region in Victoria, Australia. A type of digitate delta, they have been formed over thousands of years by sediment deposition from the Mitchell River during periods of low water flow and subsequent wash-through during periods of high water flow. The long narrow banks of silt thus formed extend more than eight kilometres east into Lake King. The south bank is navigable by car from Eagle Point through to the very easternmost tip at Point Dawson.
The Silt Jetties have been eroding since the early 1900s, soon after the permanent entrance to the Gippsland Lakes introduced sea water that killed protective shoreline vegetation. In 1919 a break cut through the northern Silt Jetty and by 1970 their land area was reduced by 45 percent. Works are being undertaken to preserve them. Farming on the jetties has ended and they are used for recreation. The jetties are listed on the Register of the National Estate.Loch Sport
Loch Sport is a coastal town in East Gippsland on the south side of Lake Victoria, Gippsland Lakes. It is separated from the Ninety Mile Beach, Bass Strait, by Lake Reeve which is behind a wide coastal dune. Loch Sport is reached by the road from Sale, via Longford.
The area was first occupied by the Tatungalung tribe. A number of middens have been found along the Ninety Mile Beach. In 1841, the lakes were explored by boat by a party led by Angus McMillan. They found open grassland on the ocean side of Lake Victoria and the area was later taken up as pastoral runs.
The area was isolated with few tracks. Seacombe, to the south-west of present Loch Sport, provided a port for the settlers. From the 1860s, a busy shipping trade developed in the lakes, and was the main communication for the settlers. During the 1870s and 1880s steamers brought shooters to Sperm Whale Head, a peninsula east of Loch Sport, and pleasure seekers to Ocean Grange on the coastal dunes.Ninety Mile Beach
The Ninety Mile Beach is a sandy stretch of beach on the south-eastern coastline of the East Gippsland region of Victoria. The beach faces Bass Strait and backs the Gippsland Lakes. The beach is just over 151 kilometres (94 miles) in length, running north-eastward from a spit near Port Albert to the man-made channel at Lakes Entrance. Behind the beach are long sandy dunes that separate the Gippsland Lakes from Bass Strait. The beach is an uninterrupted stretch of untamed coastline; it does not have any rocky headlands or platforms, and offshore there are only a few ribbons of reef which are periodically covered by sand.Lake Tyers
The township of Lake Tyers Beach, Gippsland, is about 340 kilometres east of Melbourne. It is situated on the south-eastern shore of Lake Tyers, at the lake’s outlet to the sea. Lake Tyers is a submerged river valley separated from the sea by a strip of sand dunes. The outlet is usually closed by a wide sandbar, the lake occasionally breaking out following heavy rainfall.
The Krauatungalung tribe inhabited the shores of the lake, their presence evident from middens, sites for fashioning tools and scarred trees. Several locations around the lake, such as Nargun’s Cave and Devil’s Pool, hold special significance for Aborigines.
Lake Tyers was visited by Europeans in 1846 and was named after C.J. Tyers, Commissioner of Crown Lands. Soon the area was taken up as the Lake Tyers pastoral run.
