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The highest mountains in Victoria (just under 2000m) are the Victoria Alps , located in the northeastern area.

There was an area of extensive volcanism in central and southwestern Victoria, where there are numerous extinct volcanoes and volcanic lake s. The most recent volcanic activity was at Mt Eccles, which last erupted a few thousand years ago. This volcanism was the source of the Victorian gold fields. Large basaltic lava flows are present on the western side of Melbourne and in the southwest of the state.

The southeast of the state has enormous brown coal fields.

The low flat northwest of the state that borders the Murray river was once the bed of an ancient sea and the land is much afflicted with salinity. Saline drainage from Victorian land is one of the sources of the salinity problem in the Murray-Darling River system.

Commercial salt evaporation is undertaken near Swan Hill.

Neoproterozoic to early Carboniferous

This period is covered by the recent Geological Survey of Victoria publication The Tasman Fold Belt System in Victoria. The sequence of events associated with the building of southeastern Australia reveals that mineralization and magmatic processes are intimately linked with the tectonic development of the region. The history is dominated by east-west compression of predominantly oceanic sedimentary and igneous rocks and their resultant folding, faulting and upliftAn Uplift is a geological process caused by tectonics. Uplift may be continental or isostatic. Uplift may create volcanism, mountain building events, rocky formations, and plateaus over very long periods of time. The building of mountain ranges is called. Recently, it has become increasingly apparent that major north-south movements have also been involved in constructing eastern Australia.

The PalaeozoicThe Palaeozoic is a major division of the geologic timescale, one of four geologic eras. The division of time into eras, the largest division of geologic time, dates to the 18th Century. The Palaeozoic includes six geologic periods; from oldest to younges basement is traversed by thrust faultA thrust fault is a particular type of fault, or break in the fabric of the Earth's crust with resulting movement of each side against the other, in which one side is pushed up relative to the other and somewhat over it. This is the result of compressionas more or less parallel to the north-south structural grain. The largest faults separate rocks with different ages and structural histories, and subdivide Victoria into three main structural rankings consisting of two fold belts (Delamerian and Lachlan), two terranes in the Lachlan Fold Belt (Whitelaw and Benambra), and ten structural zones (Glenelg, Grampians-Stavely, Stawell, Bendigo, Melbourne, Tabberabbera, Omeo, Deddick, Kuark, Mallacoota).

The Moyston Fault is the most important fault as it forms the terrane boundary between the Delamerian and Lachlan fold belts. These two fold belts show important differences. The Delamerian Fold Belt is mainly composed of Neoproterozoic- CambrianThe Cambrian is a major division of the geologic timescale that begins about 542 million years before the present (BP) at the end of the Proterozoic eon and ended about 490 million years BP with the beginning of the Ordovician period. It is the first peri rocks and was deformed in the Late Cambrian Delamerian OrogenyOrogeny is a geologic term associated with periods of mountain building. An orogenic belt therefore, is a geologic structure associated with continental collisions and mountain building. Generally orogenic belts consist of long parallel strips of rock exh whereas the Lachlan Fold Belt contains mainly Cambrian- DevonianThe Devonian is a major division of the geologic timescale that extends from the end of the Silurian period (360 million years before the present (BP)) to the beginning of the Mississippian subperiod of the Carboniferous (408. 5 million years BP). The Dev rocks with main deformations occurring in the late OrdovicianThe Ordovician period is the second of the six (seven in North America) periods of the Paleozoic era. The Ordovician follows the Cambrian period and is followed by the Silurian period. The Ordovician named after the Welsh tribe of the Ordovices was define - early Carboniferous interval. The first regional deformation to affect the Lachlan Fold Belt was the Benambran Orogeny, about 50 MYAMYA is an acronym used by geologists and paleontologists for "Million Years Ago". Other abbreviations that might be encountered in similar contexts are BP (Before Present), TYA(Thousand years ago), kYA (kiloYears Ago; 1 kY one thousand years), BCE (Before, after the Delamerian Orogeny. Granites comprise 20% of the total exposed area of the Lachlan Fold Belt and fall within an age range of 440 to 350 MYA. Volcanics associated with the granites are also widespread and cover an additional 5%. Blocks of older crust consisting of Neoproterozoic-Cambrian rocks, such as the Selwyn Block in central Victoria, were deformed during the late Cambrian Tyennan Orogeny prior to being incorporated into the Lachlan Fold Belt.

The second major structural break in Victoria is the Baragwanath Transform, which occurs along the eastern side of the Selwyn Block. This transform fault divides the Lachlan Fold Belt into two terranes, the Whitelaw Terrane to the west and the Benambra Terrane to the east. The main difference between these is that orogen-parallel (north-south) transport was more prevalent in the Benambra Terrane, whereas convergent east-west transport orthogonal to the orogen was dominant in the Whitelaw Terrane.