“Would you mind if I take off my wig?” asked my great-aunt.

On an afternoon steamy enough to wilt lettuce, she lounged on the screened porch of her red brick house in Richmond, Virginia, and whipped off her crown of glory. An easily embarrassed teenager, I tried not to gawk, but it was unsettling to see how few strands remained of her flyaway hair. To set me at ease, my effervescent great-aunt, Lillian Aileen Shane, made light of it while fanning herself with the fake locks. My mother attributed this loss to those early permanent wave machines Aileen submitted to, like a bride of Frankenstein. In a generational photograph taken on a windy day at the beach when I was maybe 3 years old, we all had the same will-o’-the-wispiness, although I would never achieve the same frizzy carrot top that distinguished other women in the Shane family.

Aileen was a bird.

In the South, this faintly damning label excuses behavior outside starchy normative bounds, as applied to drunks, liars, flirts, artists, unrepentant atheists, and others of the socially incorrect persuasion. Akin to character, weirdo, freak, and downright odd. You never called anyone that to her face. In her own words, she was “a peculiar Southerner from a small town.”

Perhaps this is because my great-aunt made progressive life decisions for the time and place of her birth. Born May 24 1892, Aileen thrived during the New Woman era of the early 20th century. After she graduated with a sociology degree in 1914, her father objected to her pursuing employment. In a hand-typed memoir of her career, Aileen wrote: “He thought it would be grand for me to sit and rock on the porch and sew a fine seam. Why should his ‘frail’ only daughter have to earn a living? Bridge parties and dances were to his liking.” But good works appeared more to her liking, and she stubbornly left home for Chicago. Her father gave her a fur coat to stay warm in the Windy City and refused to see her off at the train station because he was weeping too hard. Aileen landed at United Charities, famously located at Hull House, where she would sit in the cafeteria near enough to activist Jane Addams — founder of the American social work profession — to “look into her magnificent, spiritual face.”

 My great-aunt went on to earn her master’s degree at Smith College School for Social Work, and then settled in a teaching position in the newly formed Richmond Professional Institute at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. That’s where she briefly mentioned meeting “Anne, a newcomer from Ohio” in 1929. The two would be together for the rest of their lives.

This is when it becomes complicated. My mother was born in 1929, the oldest child and only daughter of Aileen’s beloved brother. Maybe it was because she had the same crazy, curly red hair or because she also burned a little brightly. No matter, Aileen took a shine to her. By the time Mom was a young girl, she was sent to stay with her aunt for longer and longer visits, perhaps dumped in Richmond, as I have come to understand, because her own mother was increasingly besieged. Four more children — all boys — in quick succession. The Great Depression. A little depression, never properly diagnosed. So Aileen helped nurture a daughter not her own.

Then a grand-niece.

 That summer my great-aunt overheated under her wig, and revealed something of her true self, I was 15, and my parents had sent me off alone on a southbound train from New York with the sole instruction: “Get off at Richmond.” Aileen and Anne greeted me in the grand lobby of Union Station, one cheery and chattering, the other buttoned down and stern. Both appalled at the unsuitable clothing in my suitcase. (My mother got an earful.) It was a sad and lonely spell for me, because Mom was manifesting her own drama, and honestly, I only wanted to be swimming in the lake and playing baseball at twilight back home, not spending precious summer weeks with little old ladies in pillbox hats and sensible heels. They took me to a secondhand store and bought a couple of dresses so we could dine at the James River Country Club, where I ate lime sherbet in a silver dessert bowl for the first time. Aileen taught me how to snap a hand fan, a remarkably flirtatious skill. She also gave me a tooled-leather jewelry box, and Anne allowed me to choose a silver-and-coral ring from hers.

 I still have both. But my memories are riddled with half-truths and secondhand narratives. Why can’t I remember Anne ever laughing? Was my great-aunt really the funny, carefree one? Were they frugal because of circumstance, or was it just a quirky habit to swipe hotel stationery and hand soaps?

It helps to read their letters and postcards again. Travel journals. Retirement tributes. Falling down a digital rabbit hole reveals Anne’s aunt to have been a notable suffragette. Even a will is telling, gifting my mother enough money to buy a house and granting Anne the use of dining room furniture for her lifetime. Mom was piqued about the fur coat, which went to a cousin. Of all the photographs I have inherited of these two companions, my favorite was taken in 1964, facing each other with sweet smiles in front of a dresser loaded with antique silver and a framed reproduction of Auguste Renoir’s lively portrait of 5-year-old Marguerite-Thérèse “Margot” Berard. Both aunts wear respectable strands of pearls and almost matching short-sleeved floral dresses.

On a recent morning in New York, I had a spare hour and rushed into The Met to see the gallery devoted to Renoir and his contemporaries. Tucked awkwardly in a narrow corner hangs the original painting of that sprightly child in a white pinafore. (Another little girl with flyaway hair.) Unlike his grander portraits, this one has a feeling of being dashed off, the brushstrokes looser, flat background purplish-brown, capturing her lifting mood after a fit of tears. The cobalt blue of Margot Berard’s bright eyes has an entirely unpredictable effect, no longer muted in an inexpensive copy. So this is what it’s like, I realized, to see someone clearly for the first time, to come into focus at last.

 Aileen and Anne witnessed the burning of bras and the passage of Roe v. Wade into constitutional law, while I’ve observed it overturned and the passage of “Don’t Say Gay” legislation. In a present era where gender identity and sexual orientation can get you a beating by bullies in a school bathroom, or shot dead in a nightclub while dancing with your friends, it’s obvious that many of us still do not tolerate otherness kindly. Individualism shouldn’t be reduced to a joke, yield a snide aside about appearance, or elicit a viable physical threat. Being female doesn’t require performative femininity, either, unless you actually like putting on dresses. At one point, my mother hesitantly asked my newly out sibling, “Do you think they were gay?” That is the wrong question. Ultimately, their sexuality is none of our damn business, and who says all relationships have to be one or another thing? Aileen and Anne chose their lives, and lived them with courage and gusto. My great-aunt certainly imparted some of that to my mother, who in turn, I like to think, shared it with me.

 Aileen was also the first woman of significance in my life to leave us. She had pressed me to attend her undergrad alma mater in South Carolina, but when the admissions catalog arrived, I discovered yellow-and-purple striped beanies were required attire for first-year students, and I had grown long past being told what to wear. Besides, I got a free ride to Vassar, where the liberal arts were more liberated. My junior year, we still had a bank of old-fashioned phone booths with retracting glass doors in the lobby of my dorm, and I stood there numbly after my mother called to say her dearest aunt had shuffled off her wig for the last time. That semester, I studied with author and guest lecturer Gail Godwin, whose course centered on two books, an 1893 novel by George Gissing titled The Odd Women and, in an obvious act of self-promotion, her own recently published derivative, The Odd Woman. Feminism wrapped in romantic garbage. Hated both, didn’t care if she flunked me. 

Give me the true odd birds, the ones with wigs and feathered fans.  ◊

In 2006, a deadly fungus started killing bat colonies across the United States. Now, an environmental economist has linked their loss to the deaths of more than 1,300 children.

The study, published in Science on Thursday, found that farmers dramatically increased pesticide use after the bat die-offs, which was in turn linked to an average infant mortality increase of nearly 8%. Unusually, the research suggests a causative link between human and bat wellbeing.

“That’s just quite rare – to get good, empirical, grounded estimates of how much value the species is providing,” said environmental economist Charles Taylor from the Harvard Kennedy School, who was not involved in the study. “Putting actual numbers to it in a credible way is tough.”

The crisis for bat colonies began in 2006, when a fungus called Pseudogymnoascus destructans hitchhiked from Europe to the US. P destructans grows on hibernating bats in winter, sprouting as white fuzz on their noses. It can extinguish a bat colony in as little as five years.

When Eyal Frank, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, learned about the disease, called white-nose syndrome, he realised it provided a perfect natural experiment to demonstrate the value of a bat. Bats eat 40% or more of their bodyweight in insects every night, including many crop pests. What would their disappearance mean?

In infected areas, he found, farmers compensated for the loss of bats by significantly increasing their use of insecticides – by 31.1% on average.

Next, Frank looked at infant mortality – a metric commonly used to judge the impact of environmental toxins. Infected counties had an infant death rate 7.9% higher, on average, than counties with healthy bats, despite pesticide use being within regulatory limits. That equates to 1,334 extra infant deaths.

Frank tested other factors that might plausibly explain the rise in deaths: unemployment, the opioid epidemic, the weather, differences among mothers, or the introduction of genetically modified crops, but none explained the increase in pesticide use or the rise in infant deaths. He spent a year “kicking the tyres on the study”, and the results held. It provided “compelling evidence”, he said, “that farmers did respond to the decline in insect-eating bats, and that response had an adverse health impact on human infants”.

It is unusual for a study of this type to suggest causation, not just correlation, said Taylor.

“A lot of papers that try to link pesticides to outcomes are correlational in nature,” said Taylor. “People who are exposed to more pesticides, for example, might have other risk factors – like, farm workers are exposed to a whole host of other socioeconomic risks that could explain why there might be different health outcomes.”

White-nose syndrome, however, essentially creates a randomised controlled trial: because the spread of white-nose syndrome was closely monitored, Frank could compare counties that had lost their bats with those the disease had not yet reached. “The bat disease wasn’t expected, and it shouldn’t have preferentially targeted certain groups over others,” Taylor said.

A number of recent studies have shown how collapsing populations of wildlife can have unexpected knock-on effects for people. In June, Frank and another researcher estimated that the collapse of India’s vulture population may have resulted in 500,000 human deaths – because without the scavenging birds to eat rotting meat, rabies and other infections proliferated.

The findings on pesticide use also echo previous research, including a study of Taylor’s. In the US, cicadas emerge en masse at intervals of 13 to 17 years. Taylor found that pesticide use increased in cicada seasons, as did infant mortality. People born in cicada years had lower test scores and were more likely to drop out of school.

Columbia history professor David Rosner, who has spent his career investigating environmental toxins, said the study joins a body of evidence going back to the 1960s that pesticides adversely affect human health. “We’re dumping these synthetic materials into our environment, not knowing anything about what their impacts are going to be,” he said. “It’s not surprising – it’s just kind of shocking that we discover it every year.”

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features

One night in February, my husband and I were bickering about our car. He said something that pissed me off and I snapped like a worn out hair tie: I hollered absurd accusations, stormed up and down the stairs and ugly-cried until I was too tired to function. Though I knew I was being wild at the time, my emotions felt terminal.

The next morning I wrote in my journal, “Something is starting to shift with my mental health.” Throughout the entry, it’s clear I was confused and distraught. I pondered the same question ad nauseam: what is wrong with me?

Sitting on the toilet with blood-stained underwear around my ankles a couple of days later, I realized my outburst was fueled by particularly severe PMS. Over a decade earlier, I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS). People with the condition were born with ovaries and experience at least two of the three main diagnostic criteria: menstrual irregularities, elevated levels of androgens like testosterone and the presence of small follicles on the ovaries.

I’d lived most of my adult life with annoying but not debilitating symptoms: painful cramps, erratic pimples, maddening stretches of insomnia and PMS that mostly manifested as apathy.

Then, in October last year, I went off birth control to answer a question I commonly see in PCOS-related Reddit threads: am I even fertile? Without the NuvaRing’s regulating influence, my mood took a turn – plummeting into deep depression and bouts of irritability in the week before my period.

The mental health toll of PCOS

Though estimates vary, between 8 and 13% of menstruating adults have PCOS, and many experience adverse mental health outcomes. Recent studies have revealed that people with PCOS are four to seven times more likely to have depression and anxiety, three to six times more likely to have an eating disorder, and 8.47 times more likely to attempt suicide. In a survey conducted by the non-profit PCOS Challenge: The National Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Association, 62.15% of the 900 respondents reported high to severe mental health impacts caused by the condition.

I spoke to 10 people with PCOS, and all say they’ve felt unequipped to deal with the associated mental health impacts, partly because the syndrome itself is not fully understood. It can affect so much: self-esteem, gender identity, relationships and sexuality. Confusing medical advice, delayed diagnoses and a hodge-podge of imperfect treatments only exacerbate the emotional toll.

Not long after my explosive outburst, I sought help from a psychiatrist, hoping to understand and better manage my stormy moods. When I mentioned that these episodes always seemed to occur at the same time every month, I felt dismissed. The psychiatrist responded, “I see signs of bipolar disorder.” Though she refrained from an official diagnosis, she did offer a prescription for bipolar medication.

Some studies suggest a bidirectional relationship between bipolar disorder and PCOS. But bipolar didn’t fit my experience. “If mood symptoms appear monthly, this suggests a sensitivity to hormonal fluctuations during the menstrual cycle” and probably PCOS, says Phoutdavone Phimphasone-Brady, a clinical health psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado who specializes in PCOS.

While there’s significant overlap between symptoms – including mood swings, irritability and insomnia – I didn’t experience the excessive energy and out-of-character behaviors typically associated with bipolar disorder. Misdiagnosis could happen when providers aren’t familiar with PCOS, says Phimphasone-Brady, who recommends that patients see a reproductive psychiatrist or psychologist experienced in menstrual cycle-related mental health issues.

Experts say that people with PCOS may suffer from mental health issues due to a number of biological factors. Elevated levels of androgens, such as testosterone, can contribute to mood disturbances and anxiety. Insulin resistance, a common symptom, affects neurotransmitter function and mood regulation. Chronic inflammation associated with PCOS is linked to depression and anxiety. And emerging research suggests that people with PCOS have fewer beneficial bacteria in their microbiome, increasing inflammation in the brain and possibly worsening mood disorders.

After just one session with the psychiatrist, I felt like drugs were being pushed on me without a clear reason to take them – and the anxiety around my moods intensified. I knew the darkness would eventually return, but with my irregular periods, I struggled to get ahead of it. I wondered: should I meditate more? Just take the pills? Ramp up my self-care?

It’s easier to believe we can overcome health obstacles than to accept we’re powerless against the slew of macro forces that impede our wellbeing. Applying a hustle culture mentality to my PCOS symptoms felt more empowering than accepting the long-held and widely quantified truth that, medically, women’s bodies just don’t matter all that much.

How body image issues affect self-esteem for people with PCOS

The consequences of insulin resistance and elevated testosterone levels – such as weight gain and difficulty losing weight, excess facial and body hair, acne, and generally more masculinized appearances – can lead to low self-esteem and negative body image, a significant predictor for mental health issues, says Phimphasone-Brady.

Julieta Cardenas, a 33-year-old journalist from Queens, New York, gained 40lb after a PCOS diagnosis and starting medications for her physical and mental health. She has devoted ample therapy sessions to body image, but the combination of sudden weight gain, birth control and desensitizing antidepressants left her feeling “like a brain in a jar hooked up to a keyboard”. Cardenas says she doesn’t even perceive herself as “a sexual being” anymore.

Routine medical advice for people with PCOS often reinforces conventional beauty standards. Many healthcare providers encourage weight loss, as there’s some evidence that obesity may exacerbate the condition. However, dieting rarely leads to sustained results. With excess weight often part of PCOS, the effort can feel especially sisyphean. “When patients don’t reach a weight loss goal, they may feel as if they’ve failed,” says Phimphasone-Brady, especially when they’re following doctors’ instructions.

People living with PCOS also tend to experience weight bias in healthcare interactions. “Providers often hold the assumption that thin bodies are healthy and fat bodies are unhealthy,” writes Stacey L Williams in The Psychology of PCOS. When Normandie Luscher, a 35-year-old illustrator in Syracuse, went to the doctor for a persistent cough, she felt judged for her size. “The doctor was like, ‘So, tell me about what you’re eating,’” says Luscher, who’d already had bariatric surgery to treat the prediabetes she developed from having PCOS. “I was just like, ‘Why? What does that have to do with anything?’”

In lieu of evidence-based guidance on the best ways for PCOS patients to lose weight, there’s an abundance of diet advice on social media that’s both profit-driven and often grounded in misinformation. This could pose problems for a population that already has a higher risk of disordered eating.

How fertility challenges can affect mental health

PCOS is a leading cause of infertility in people of reproductive age; studies indicate that the infertility rate for those with the condition is about 15 times higher than for people without. At 38, Claire Salinda, a writer with PCOS in Los Angeles, constantly worries about her fertility. “I know my partner doesn’t love me based on whether I can keep his lineage going,” she says. “But because he wants kids, I feel pressure to deliver.” Salinda often feels less desirable because of her PCOS. “Who wants to have a baby with these ‘old’ eggs that aren’t even dropping regularly?”

Infertility can also be a significant blow to one’s sense of gender identity. When Anne Kamau, a 42-year-old salesperson from Nairobi, was diagnosed with PCOS, her gynecologist told her she might never have children. “I felt like he’d taken away something core to a woman’s life,” she says. Kamau did eventually have two children, and also started the PCOS Foundation of Kenya, which includes a WhatsApp support group of over 800 members going through similar experiences.

PCOS treatment and research have ‘long way to go’

PCOS is probably an ancient condition, writes Williams, but it wasn’t identified and labeled until 1935 – as Stein Leventhal syndrome, after the two doctors who discovered it. Almost a century later, there are still no FDA-approved drugs to directly treat this complex, multi-system syndrome that can cause lifelong ailments like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, uterine bleeding, heart disease and stroke. Among the 315 medical conditions that receive federal funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), PCOS ranks near the bottom.

“The main reason is the lack of recognition by physicians and researchers that PCOS is about more than infertility,” says Katherine Sherif, chief of women’s health at Thomas Jefferson University.

Currently, most PCOS research funding falls under the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which prioritizes reproductive health – only one piece of the PCOS puzzle. “It’s like an orphan; no one wants to own the research,” Sherif says, adding that it’s “reprehensible in this disorder that affects more women than diabetes and has profound effects on metabolic health”.

Limited funding for PCOS research has led to a lack of awareness and understanding among physicians. The NIH didn’t establish a working definition for PCOS until 1990, and up to 75% of people with PCOS remain undiagnosed after visiting their doctors. Sherif attributes delays to short gynecologist visits, which often miss complex conditions and the misconception that only overweight people can have PCOS. Non-gynecologists may also overlook a patient’s menstrual history, considering it irrelevant, she says. And despite their being disproportionately affected by the condition, Black women can experience further delays in diagnosis because of racial bias in medical settings.

“We have made progress, but frankly, there’s a long way to go,” says Sasha Ottey, the executive director of PCOS Challenge. “Women, and particularly PCOS patients, endure injustices of medical gaslighting, unnecessary surgeries, inaccurate and harmful medical advice and ineffective treatments that only compound the mental health burden of the condition itself.”

Treating PCOS costs an estimated $8bn annually in the US alone. This financial burden adds psychological pressure on patients already struggling with their mental health, especially in a fragmented healthcare system that creates barriers to continuous care and inflates out-of-pocket expenses. For instance, Cardenas’s $300 glucose sensors, essential for managing her insulin resistance, aren’t covered by insurance. “Being an advocate for your own care is exhausting,” she says.

Gaining recognition and finding relief for PCOS

This syndrome is getting more attention. PCOS Challenge successfully led an effort to have the condition recognized by US legislators in 2017, designating September as PCOS Awareness Month. Some drug companies are exploring new medications for the condition. And in 2023, leading researchers updated guidelines for PCOS assessment and treatment.

“There are effective therapies for mental health and research is surging to find more comprehensive treatments for PCOS,” says Phimphasone-Brady, who led a 2022 review that proved psychosocial interventions can significantly improve mental health issues related to PCOS.

Dissatisfied with my gynecologist’s efforts, I advocated for further testing. A thorough hormone panel showed I have very low progesterone, which can exacerbate symptoms like mood swings and insomnia, and a lack of bacterial diversity in my gut, which affects hormone regulation and increases inflammation. A high fiber diet and tailored supplements, on top of talk therapy and meditation, have helped my mental and physical health tremendously. Having firm data has also helped me recast my mental struggles in a more compassionate light; this is not my fault.

Instead of wondering what’s wrong with me, I now think about how to, as Phimphasone-Brady says, “make PCOS just a friendly passenger, rather than feeling like you’re on this rollercoaster ride and you don’t know where you’re going”. The prompt has helped me take better, more loving care of myself – and others I spoke to expressed similar sentiments. “I’m trying to treat my body like a dog,” Salinda, the LA writer, tells me. “That means giving it food, water, lots of pats and space to run.”

Mount Napier dominates the landscape just south of the Victorian town of Hamilton in western Victoria.

The 440-metre-high volcanic cone slumbers amid the grasslands and manna gum forests of the Western District. It is classified as "dormant" by some, but that would be generous. It is unlikely to wake.

Victoria's dormant and extinct volcanoes probably won't explode back into life, but they serve as a reminder the Western District is an active volcanic region.

And that means new volcanoes in Victoria aren't just likely. They are inevitable.

Ander Guinea-Maysounave, a lecturer in geosciences at Federation University, said it was only a matter of time.

"It is almost certain we will have new eruptions," Dr Guinea said.

"We are in an active volcanic field. The mechanisms that created those 300-odd eruption points in western Victoria, those are still happening.

"It is much less likely that a volcano that has already erupted will start again. It is a lot more likely a new volcano will form somewhere else. That is almost a given. It is going to happen.

"This may freak out some people that we might have a volcano popping up somewhere." 

"The follow-up question is when is this going to happen? It may be in 100 years, or 5,000 years. We don't know. We need to have more information to answer that question."

Volcanic eruptions 'practically yesterday'

Mount Napier is comparatively young in geological terms. Its last eruptions occurred about 32,000 years ago. That is practically "yesterday", according to Dr Guinea.

Budj Bim (Mt Eccles) and Tower Hill (Warrnambool) are estimated to have erupted between 33,000 and 40,000 years ago.

Australia's youngest volcanoes are in eastern South Australia, though. Mount Gambier may have erupted 6,000 years ago, while Mount Schank's estimated age is about 5,000 years.

"In geological time it's not even yesterday. It's last hour, almost," Dr Guinea said.

"There are accounts of Aboriginal histories that talk about volcanic eruptions. People have actually witnessed some of those eruptions, which makes sense when we consider the ages given to some of those volcanoes."

Dr Guinea said virtually all of Australia's existing volcanoes would be classed as extinct rather than dormant.

"It's a bit difficult [to distinguish] dormant and active because dormant implies there is potential to be active again," he explained.

"In some places, mountains may be classified as dormant depending on how many years since its last eruption, perhaps maybe 10,000 years, and if it is 100,000 years it may be considered extinct.

"Those numbers may change depending on the source because there is no agreement on that."

Many of Australia's volcanoes exist in a band that begins in Queensland and extends down along the eastern seaboard.

They can be explained by a hotspot deep beneath the Earth's surface.

The hotspot is effectively immobile in reference to the globe but the Australian landmass isn't. As Australia inches slowly north volcanoes have burst forth along a relatively straight line above this hotspot.

"The extinct volcanoes in Queensland are the oldest in that chain, while those in Tasmania are somewhat younger. The steady continental drift means that steadily weakening hotspot is now south of Tasmania," Dr Guinea said.

The problem of the province

The problem with western Victoria and eastern South Australia's volcanoes is they do not occur along this neat band.

"I wish this was an easy thing to explain but it's actually been a heated debate," Dr Guinea said.

"There is general agreement the line of volcanoes on the Australian eastern seaboard are on that hotspot, and a lot of people were trying to explain that western Victorian volcanoes with the same thing.

"There are two problems with the Newer Volcanic Province: first, the volcanoes are a lot younger than those on the eastern side of Melbourne, and secondly they have an east trend from Mt Gambier in the west to just west of Melbourne.

"While the eastern seaboard volcanoes are all in a line, the Newer Volcanic Province ones are all over the place."

Dr Guinea said no individual mechanism could explain why the Newer Volcanic Province was active. A combination of sub-surface heat and seismic pressure add up to the possible reason.

"We have New Zealand's plate pushing towards us, which increases compression but also creates some deep faults and fractures," he said.

"Because the pushing from New Zealand is not direct but oblique to it, that opens it up to have decompression. 

"By themselves, each of these things doesn't have enough to create enough melting for a volcano but if you combine them together the numbers add up."

That does not guarantee new volcanoes will be in the immediate vicinity of the most recent eruptions on or near the South Australian-Victorian border.

"There was a study published a few years ago that found an anomaly between Daylesford and Bendigo. By itself, it doesn't mean there is a lot of magma and there will be a volcano erupting but that would be one of the signs," Dr Guinea explained.

"At the same time you have the Daylesford and Hepburn hot springs, which are there for a reason too." 

"There is heat underground, so if I had to bet on where the next eruption would be, then probably, maybe there, but there is not enough research yet."

Landmarks like 'lighthouses'

The Western District's recent and ancient history is intertwined with its volcanic past.

While little would grow in the immediate aftermath of an eruption, the blanket of basalt would ultimately break down into a mineral-rich clay with an abundance of magnesium and iron.

In addition to the rich soils that encouraged plant growth, peaks such as Mount Elephant near Derrinallum served as important landmarks for Aboriginal communities and early European settlers, historian and author Pam McGregor explained.

"Mount Elephant was a centre point, culturally," Ms McGregor said.

"There was a small Derrinallum Aboriginal community and Mount Elephant provided shelter but it was also used as a landmark, almost like a lighthouse.

"It was like that in another way for European settlers who were attracted to the incredibly fertile, rich soils."