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…
Category: Geosite
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…
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…
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…
Cathedral Range State Park
The Cathedral Range State Park is located approximately 100 km north-east of Victoria (see map below) near Taggerty, VIC. The area is popular for rock climbers, bush walkers and hikers, with a number of trails winding through the geology and rewarding 360 degree views of the landscape. The local geology of the area mostly consists of sedimentary and volcanic formations…
Dinosaurs in the Otways
For many years palaeontologists, locals and tourists alike have been finding and unearthing a rich history of dinosaur remains along the coast of Victoria and hardly anyone knows about it! The Otway Ranges Coastal Cretaceous site extends all the way from Lorne to Moonlight Head. Most of the locations were found by luck with someone…
Werribee Gorge
Werribee Gorge is the perfect place to spend a hot summers day outdoors: swimming at Miekle’s Point Picnic Area, rock climbing at Falcons Lookout, hiking through some of Melbourne’s most ancient rocks or… fold hunting! The geology at Werribee records almost 500 million years (Ma) of Victoria’s geological history. The oldest rocks in the park are the Ordovician…
Wilson’s Promontory National Park
The southern-most tip of the Australia mainland is fantastic for a weekend away- camping, hiking and enjoying unspoilt, white sand beaches. The Prom is a granitic batholith from the lower Devonian. As with the You Yangs, this granitic pluton rose to the crust due to its higher temperature, and lower density. It is thought that it…
weekendgeology.com 