A drawback (at present) of the data download page at www.malleefocus.com.au/data is that you can't easily see the 'big picture' of the data. I've had to develop some images of the Shuttle elevation and GeoSciences Victoria gamma-radiometrics data for some work on the BCG/Vic No Till Flexible Farming Project. These images may be useful for people trying to understand what variation at the farm level might mean. 

I've put the images into Google Earth '.kmz' files. These are the links to the images. Those on slow connections need to beware: some kmz files are up to 10Mb and will take a while to download:

  The images illustrate some of the features that make the gamma-radiometrics data useful, and also the east-west artifacts that users south of Swan Hill and east of Birchip need to be careful of. 

Soils around rivers and lakes have much in common with soils on hills to the south-east. The 'fingers' of soil blown in from South Australia's coast can be seen to be mixed in to some of the areas around them. The 'plains' of the southern Mallee and northern Wimmera are somewhere between.

The elevation data shows clearly the outline of the ancient Lake Bungunnia, below about 65m, and the possible past course of the Murray river along the now Wimmera river.  'Strand lines' (beach dunes) of the retreating Murrayvian gulf and lunettes of ancient lakes can also be distinguished from the dunes that are more obvious at ground level.

I'm not sure how to interpret the magnetics. It's supposed to relate to depth to bedrock. It does show that there's some weird things going on, centered on Culgoa and from Horsham northwest to Murrayville. 

If you would like to share an observation on the data and what you think it means, please post a comment! 

This is an example of what you will see in Google Earth, in this case the elevation image over the Tyrrell basin (it's upside-down - I was looking from the north):