Victoria Unearthed: updated with more data and better usability.
Victoria Unearthed is an easy to use interactive map which brings together environmental and historical information. It has been developed by the Department of Environment, Land Water and Planning (DELWP) and Environment Protection Authority Victoria (EPA) to help users investigate potential and existing contamination of land and groundwater.
The historical business information in Victoria Unearthed includes over half a million historical business records dating back to the 1890s, digitised for the first time as part of this project. These come from Sands and McDougall directories (Victoria’s original ‘phone books’) and can provide clues on where past business activity may have resulted in legacy contamination. The information included in Victoria Unearthed is derived from directories published around every 10 years between 1896 and 1974 and involves only information listed in the trades and business directories – not the residential sections.
The environmental information in Victoria Unearthed includes several EPA datasets: sites with EPA licences, sites on EPA’s Priority Sites Register (locations with known environmental issues), groundwater restrictions, planning overlays of potential or identified contamination (environmental audit overlays), and the location of past and present landfills.
For specialist users, all this data is also being made available in spatial formats through DataVic or Spatial Datamart.
You can find out more about Victoria Unearthed at www.environment.vic.gov.au/victoria-unearthed and access the map via mapshare.vic.gov.au/victoriaunearthed