1.    Moth
Small light-footed, winged, creatures of the Alps

                  – Yaitmathang summers:

mountain pygmy possum, smoky mouse, broad toothed rat,

bush rat, Bogong moth, alpine tree frog, alpine water skink

lives in bogs, long-nosed bandicoot, Swainson’s antechinus

tiger quoll, nine species of bat; in winter sub-nivean inhabitants:

one possum, two rats and an antechinus
                                Bogong High Plains

                                1853: lowing arrival
HORNS, HOOFS, SKIN, HIDE, EYES, EARS, FUR, TONGUE:



          2.    Ranunculus
Anemone Buttercup flower buds form in autumn

wintering under snow its white flowers are the first

to appear after snowmelt

recorded by J Stirling on Mt Hotham in 1887

vanished so rapidly due to cattle grazing

that later botanists considered the record

of Ranunculus anemoneus erroneous
          3.    Mossbeds
Around the springs which form the headwaters of all the streams and along the streams –

mossbeds, from a distance they take on a brownish colour of shrub foliage which obscures the

underlying golden spahgnum holding up 24 times its weight in water, cattle come to the

mossbeds for water and palatable plants the total area of mossbeds is very great 3,350 ha on

Bogong High Plains the sphagnum buffers the flow of water the mossbeds were a nuisance to

the cattlemen death traps for the unwary it was impossible to ride a horse through and cattle

going into them to drink were frequently bogged the locals adopted a policy of burning them out

water runs fast that once flowed slow undercut the stream banks lowered the water table down

to stony pavements by the 1950s 50% of mossbeds had dried out on the high plains and on the

isolated steeper mountains Hotham, Loch, Feathertop, and Bogong where water is scarce the

sphagnum bogs have almost disappeared – as a result of continued grazing, burning and

trampling I have not yet seen an undamaged mossbed a breath of cold air will strike you as go

past taking several hundred years to recover 





Notes:

The Alpine National Park was established in 1989; cattle were finally excluded from Bogong High Plains in 2006.

Sources:

Moth

Carr, Stella G.M 1962, The Discovery of the Bogong High Plains, Proceedings of the Royal Soc Vic 75 (2), pp285-289.

Parks Victoria, Fauna of the Australian Alps pdf, Parks Victoria Education Resource accessed 18.10.2025
Ranunculus

Gillbank, Linden, 1991, The Biological Heritage of Victoria’s Alps: an Historical exploration, Historical Places Section, DC&E Vic. p26, 62

Stirling, James, 1887, Notes on the flora of Mount Hotham, The Victorian Naturalist, vol 4 (1887-1888), pp72-78, Field Naturalists Club of Victoria
Mossbeds

Carr, Stella G.M. & J. S. Turner, 1959, The Ecology of the Bogong High Plains, 1. The Environmental Factors and the Grassland Communities,

Aust Journal Botany, (7), p13 Costin, A.B., 1957, High Mountain Catchments in Victoria in Relation to Land Use, Soil Conservation Authority,

p18, 25

Fawcett, Maisie to Professor Turner, Botany School, University of Melbourne, undated letter, John Stewart Turner Papers UMA BOX 121

TURN 00892 Soil Conservation – Omeo, SMF to JST letters 1948

Fawcett, S. G. Maisie and J. S. Turner 1948, Ecological work on the High Plains, Bogong, in connection with soil erosion: second report

July 22nd, 1948, Botany Department, University of Melbourne, p31

Fawcet, S.G.M. 1949, Soil Conservation in the Hume Catchment, Victorian Compost News vol 3, no 8, p88

Turner, J. S, et al.1957, A report on the high mountain catchments of New South Wales and Victoria, Australian Academy of Science, p14,18, 27