INDIGENOUS people likely lived in the south-west before Tower Hill's volcano last erupted, new evidence suggests.
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Fresh conclusions about the volcano's age have helped researchers make links with a forgotten axe that a Warrnambool man uncovered more than 70 years ago.
University of Melbourne earth scientist Erin Matchan and co-researchers have used argon-argon dating on lava from Tower Hill for the first time, finding the volcano's last eruption was about 36,800 years ago.
Their findings support radiocarbon dating of Tower Hill sediments that previously placed the last eruption at about 35,000 years ago.
But Dr Matchan said the volcano's age threw light on a little-known chance discovery coined the "Bushfield axe" that now suggested humans were present before the eruption.
"I was looking for any archaeological evidence that was underneath any volcanic material in Victoria, and it's really rare. There is only one that can be verified," she said.
A Warrnambool man identified as E W Hamilton uncovered the axe, now in Museums Victoria's collections, while sinking a post hole on the Merri River bank about 40 kilometres north of Bushfield in the 1940s.
Dr Matchan said records showed Mr Hamilton uncovered the axe nearly two metres below the volcanic material she and colleagues had now dated.
"That axe beneath the volcanic ash tells us people were present in the landscape at the time of that eruption," she said.
"That's consistent with occupation ages for sites in south-east Australia, that people were around 40,000 years ago."
Meanwhile, the researchers also used samples from Tyrendarra that showed the Budj Bim volcano, formerly known as Mount Eccles, last erupted about 36,900 years ago.
Dr Matchan said if Indigenous oral traditions referenced either of the volcanoes erupting then the dates from her research could be paired with the traditions to further understand human occupation timelines.
"If they do reflect volcanic activity they could be some of the oldest stories in the world," she said.
"We should be considering more what Indigenous ecological knowledge is available and recognise how old a lot of these traditions could be and help safe-guard them."
The Gunditj-Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation's Denis Rose said he hadn't heard of the "Bushfield axe" before seeing the study, but the findings did not surprise him.
"There's no doubt that people would have been living around then," Mr Rose said.
"It's another building block onto the complex and sophisticated life that people led in this part of the country, one that had plenty of resources."
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