Heathcote is a small town North of Melbourne, renowned for gourmet foods and distinctive wines – specifically its stunning Shiraz. It is also a hot spot for prospectors on the hunt for Gold and – surrounded by National and State Parks – a popular destination for bush walkers and twitchers alike. There are, however, many…
Author: WeekendGeology
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Lake Tyrrell
Lake Tyrrell is the largest (208.6 km²) of many inland Quaternary salinas (salt lakes and pans) in the Murray Basin of northwestern Victoria. The Murray Basin is a shallow geological basin that covers about 300 000 km2, across the States of Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales. Salt lakes are common in Australia, occurring…
Kooyoora State Park
The Kooyoora State Park is located approximately 220 km north-west of Melbourne between Wedderburn and Rheola (Figure 1). The park owes its popularity to the Melville Caves, a rocky outcrop which provides a huge variety of recreational opportunities including bushwalking, rock climbing, camping and picnicking. Rocky outcrops across Victoria play an important role in early…
Phillip Island
Phillip Island is located in Western Port, approximately 120 km south-east of Melbourne. The island is rich in history, both human and natural – over 500 million years of it! Nature is a huge draw point, with over 3.5 million tourists a year flocking to the island to experience the iconic rocky coastal landscapes, as…
Bendigo Goldfields
Bendigo is a city in regional Victoria approximately 150km northwest of the capital Melbourne. Once a bustling gold-rush settlement littered with poppet heads, mullock heaps and the deafening soundtrack of stamping batteries, Bendigo has – thanks to its golden past – transitioned into an established and grand city. Victoria’s recorded gold production is in excess of…
Lake Eppalock
Millions of years ago an extensive glacier once carved its way in a northerly direction across Victoria, with only a few outcrops surviving millions of years of erosional processes. A glacier is essentially an extremely powerful frozen river of ice. As it moves over a landscape it erodes channels and valleys, literally tearing rocks from the…
Maria Island
Maria Island is a special place tucked away off the east coast of Tasmania, consisting of two islands separated by a narrow isthmus. It is accessed via ferry from Triabunna, kayak/boat or charted flight. The island has a rich human history, including: convicts, whaling, industry and mining as well as geological history, including: limestone cliffs,…
Studley Park
Structural geology is a geologist’s primary tool or language which he uses to observe and describe rocks – from the microscopic (i.e. crystallographic structures) to the macroscopic (i.e. faults and folds), and even to global scales (i.e. tectonics). Studley Park, just outside the Melbourne CBD, is the perfect place to learn some of the basic…
Beaumaris
Beaumaris and the wider Sandringham district – including Half Moon Bay – are home to spectacular outcrops of highly weathered Iron-rich Cenozoic (young) sandstone. This part of the coast is littered with beautiful beaches and seascapes for walkers and swimmers alike. The area first became interesting to Palaeontologists, however, in the early 1970s when a young researcher…
Organ Pipes National Park
The Organ Pipes National Park is just a short trip north-east of Melbourne on the Calder Freeway and well worth a visit. The park features a spectacular set of world-class basalt columns formed by the cooling and cracking of molten lava (below). About a million years ago mafic lava from volcanoes 6 km north of the site…
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