Generations of Australians knew Mount Noorat, one of Victoria's best-preserved volcanoes, as Mount Turalla, which played a major role in Alan Marshall's much-loved 1955 fictionalised autobiography I Can Jump Puddles.
Noorat is a small town on the Terang-Mortlake Road, 211km west of Melbourne. Alan Marshall was born there in 1902 at the rear of the Bee-Hive Store, which still stands in the town's main street.
Over the road is the Noorat Primary School, built of stone in 1873. Alan Marshall attended school there, and related events of his school day memories and the people he met in his book, which sold more than three-million copies worldwide.
The Alan Marshall Walking Track is a 2.4km hike to the crater and summit of Mount Noorat, where trekkers are rewarded with sweeping views across western Victoria's vast volcanic plains. Marshall, who contracted polio at the age of six, climbed it on crutches.
Volcanic landscape
Since the dawn of its formation, the surface of planet earth has been moulded and reshaped by volcanoes.
Although the volcanic plains across Victoria's southwest were built up by sporadic volcanic eruptions over a period of around five millioncontaining Australia's youngest volcanoes.
