Part of the wonderful geology building at the University of Queensland.
Earlier this year I visited The University of Queensland in Australia. For this week’s picture, I’m sharing an image of the lovely geology building at the university. The building is made out of gorgeous sandstone blocks… and there’s a dinosaur mural! And, lower down, check out the stones with the fossil carvings! What a great building. I think this is one of the most lovely and delightful geology buildings that I have ever visited.
Does anyone else have a great geology building at their university? If so please share pictures in the comments.
Weathered sandstone exposure at Cottage Point, Australia.
Here’s another picture from my recent trip to Australia. This picture shows a weathered sandstone outcrop that I saw (by kayak!) at a place called Cottage Point. You can see fresh banded sandstone (light in color) underneath a darker weathering rim. Weathering has created some very interesting shapes in this outcrop!
There are quite a few sandstone rocks in the Sydney area. They are frequently used as building stones — for example, the ones I shared in an earlier post.
I’m currently on the east coast of Australia, where local sandstone is commonly used as a building stone. Above is a picture that I took this morning. This picture shows some beautiful building stones on display at the University of Newcastle. The cross-bedding and variable coloration of the sandstone layers is just gorgeous. What a lovely building stone!
Rock art and sandstone bedding in the Cederberg Mountains, South Africa
First and foremost, I must apologize for the long gap in my blogging. I started the year with great intentions to revive this blog with my monthly science book posts… and then I didn’t post for several months! However, I think I have a good excuse: in January I found out that I am pregnant. Unfortunately, I have been suffering from an extreme form of morning sickness. I’ve been really, really ill for months. So, it was all I could do to keep up with my day job… let alone make time for blogging and other hobbies! I didn’t see my friends for weeks. I was even too sick to even do much reading, which obviously impacted my good intentions of reading more science books this year!
However, I am finally starting to feel a little better… so, I’d like to make another attempt to revive my blogging! So, stay tuned!
For today, however, I thought I would share a picture of some rock art on a lovely sandstone outcrop. I like how you can see some bedding in the sandstone behind the artwork. I took this picture last October, when my husband and I visited the Sevilla Rock Art Trail as part of a weekend trip to the Cederberg Mountains in South Africa. We visited the Cedeberg, one of our favorite places in the world, to celebrate our 5 year wedding anniversary. I previously posted some pictures of this rock art trail several years ago… perhaps I’ll put up a few more from this more recent trip when I have a chance. If you ever find yourself in the Cederberg, I definitely recommend a visit to the trail!
On Monday I shared one picture from a recent hike to Elephant’s Eye cave in Silvermine Nature Reserve here in the Cape Town region of South Africa. Today I’m sharing some more pictures from that hike, which took place last weekend.
I really enjoy hiking to Elephant’s Eye.The hike consists of a fairly easy 3 hour round trip route that takes you through some beautiful fynbos vegetation and past some lovely rock formations in Table Mountain Sandstone. The cave itself is a great destination that provides a nice place for lunch or a snack and, when the weather is clear, a fantastic view of the valley below. Generally, I hike to Elephant’s Eye two or three times a year. However, until last weekend I hadn’t hiked to Elephant’s Eye in well over a year. That’s because much of the Silvermine Nature Reserve was burned during a large forest fire last year. For most of last year, the hike to Elephant’s Eye was closed while the area recovered from the fire. The Elephant’s Eye hiking trial was only opened up again recently.
Without further ado, enjoy some pictures from the hike. Note that the weather was rainy and misty for our hike last weekend – however, I enjoyed hiking in the cooler weather. Also note how the vegetation has recovered significantly yet there are still signs of last year’s fire. For example, we saw burned logs and tree stumps amidst fresh green vegetation.
Elephant’s Eye Hike #2.Elephant’s Eye Hike #3. My husband Jackie and I competed for nerdiest t-shirt. My Star Wars t-shirt was pretty amazing, but I think that Jackie won the contest with his “Kitten Kong” t-shirt.Elephant’s Eye Hike #4.Elephant’s Eye Hike #5. A remnant of last year’s forest fire: a burned tree stump.Elephant’s Eye Hike #6. Note a few more charred tree stumps in this picture.Elephant’s Eye Hike #7. Trees and a cliff of Table Mountain Sandstone in the background.Elephant’s Eye Hike #8. Charred logs surrounded by green grass.Elephant’s Eye Hike #9. More charred logs and green grass.Elephant’s Eye Hike #10. The approach to the cave.Elephant’s Eye Hike #11. A misty view of the cave.Elephant’s Eye Hike #12. The cave itself.Elephant’s Eye Hike #13. The view from the cave entrance, shrouded in mist.Elephant’s Eye Hike #14. Another misty view from the cave.Elephant’s Eye Hike #15. We could see a little through the mist.Elephant’s Eye Hike #16. For a few minutes, the mist lifted and we had a lovely view of the valley below.Elephant’s Eye Hike #17. We saw some lovely pink March Lilies – they’re a little early this year!Elephant’s Eye Hike #18. On our way back to the parking lot, we took a small detour and walked past a beautiful lake. Note more charred tree remains here.Elephant’s Eye Hike #19.Elephant’s Eye Hike #20. Water lilies viewed from the bridge.Elephant’s Eye Hike #21. Another view of the water lilies.Elephant’s Eye Hike #22. Yet another view of the water lilies.Elephant’s Eye Hike #23. One last view of the lake as we headed back to the parking lot.
That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more pictures of hikes in the Cape Town area. In August I’ll be backpacking the Fish River Canyon in Namibia with friends, so I’ll be going on a number of training hikes this year. My goal is to hike 2 or 3 times per month. I’m fortunate to live in a part of the world with such lovely hiking trails!
Elephant’s Eye on a rainy Saturday in February 2016.
This week’s “Monday Geology Picture” post features a natural rock formation that resembles an elephant. A small cave named “Elephant’s Eye” is located at the eye of this rock elephant’s head. The elephant consists of Table Mountain Sandstone and is located in the Silvermine Nature Reserve here in the Cape Town region of South Africa. On Saturday I hiked up to Elephant’s Eye with some friends. We hiked on a rare rainy summer day, and we appreciated the cooler weather for our hiking. The scenery on our hike was ethereal and beautiful, although we didn’t have much of a view from the top of the hill! We mostly saw mist. I’ll share some more pictures from our hike later this week.
Back in March and April 2015 my husband and I travelled to Australia for a couple of weeks for vacation. We went to visit some good friends who live in Sydney. We spent most of our time in Sydney and some of the surrounding areas, such as the Blue Mountains. We also spent a few days up in the Port Douglas area, including a couple of days on a boat out on the Great Barrier Reef.
While we were in Sydney, we were very impressed by all of the sandstone, which can be seen in outcrop at many places in Sydney, including along many of the beaches. We observed many interesting features in these sandstone outcrops, such as impressive cross-bedding structures, trace fossils, interesting erosional forms, and oxidation/coloring of various types and shades. We also observed that many buildings, walls, bridges, and other structures in Sydney are constructed out of sandstone blocks, which we assume were locally derived.
I’ve already shared some pictures of Sydney sandstone outcrops here, here, and here and of some sandstone building stones here. Today, I want to share some more pictures of Sydney sandstone and also briefly discuss its geology.
The sandstone that we observed around Sydney is known as the Syndey Sandstone or the Hawkesbury Sandstone. A nice scientific paper about the sandstone can be found here. The sandstone is Triassic in age and is interpreted to have been deposited in a fluvial environment by the ancient Hawkesbury River. Based on the scale and nature of features in the sandstone, such as cross-bedding and abandoned filled channels, this ancient river was likely a very large, sand-rich, braided river with deep main channels. Some of the abandoned channel fills are up to 18 m deep. The Hawkesbury Sandstone is extensively exposed in the Sydney area, outcropping over ~20,000 square kilometers in the Sydney Basin. The sandstone unit has a maximum thickness of ~290 m. The sandstone is a beautiful rock and has been used extensively as a building stone in Sydney, from the 1700s through to the present day.
Here’s a map showing the extent of the Hawkesbury Sandstone in the vicinity of Sydney:
Map showing the extent of the Hawkesbury Sandstone in the Sydney Area. Map from Rust and Jones (1987), Journal of Sedimentary Research, Vol. 57, No. 2: 222-333. Click to enlarge.
Here are some more pictures of this remarkable sandstone that we encountered pretty much everywhere in Sydney. The pictures below were all taken during a walk along the ocean, near Bondi Beach.
Sydney Sandstone #2.Sydney Sandstone #3.Sydney Sandstone #4.Sydney Sandstone #5.Sydney Sandstone #6.Sydney Sandstone #7.Sydney Sandstone #8.Sydney Sandstone #9.Sydney Sandstone #10.Sydney Sandstone #11. Sandal for scale.Sydney Sandstone #12.Sydney Sandstone #13.Sydney Sandstone #14.Sydney Sandstone #15. A bench amidst the cross-bedding.Sydney Sandstone #16. Another view of the bench adjacent to the cross-bedding.Sydney Sandstone #17.Sydney Sandstone #18.Sydney Sandstone #19.Sydney Sandstone #20.Sydney Sandstone #21.Sydney Sandstone #22.Sydney Sandstone #23.Sydney Sandstone #24.Sydney Sandstone #25. Sandstone being used as a building stone along the walking path… near an outcrop of the same sandstone.Sydney Sandstone #26.Sydney Sandstone #27.Sydney Sandstone #28.Sydney Sandstone #29.Sydney Sandstone #30.Sydney Sandstone #31.Sydney Sandstone #32.
That’s all for today… stay tuned for some more pictures from our recent Australian travels!
Enjoying a stop at a bench in front of some Sydney sandstone with classic cross-bedding.
Goodness, I’ve been busy recently! I’m afraid that my blogging has been quite neglected… as it has been for the past few months.
However, things have finally calmed down a little now, so I’m going to make an effort over the next few weeks to share some geological pictures from some of my recent travels… and also possibly from some travels in 2014 that I neglected to blog about.
I’ll start with this quick “Monday Geology Picture” post. This week’s picture shows me sitting on a bench in front of some sandstone in Sydney, Australia. This particular sandstone displays some impressive cross-bedding. My husband took this picture when we were on a beachside walk near Bondi Beach back in March 2015. I wish that all benches had such great geological scenery in the vicinity!
This week’s Monday Geology Picture was taken during my recent vacation in Australia. One day my husband and I drove outside of Sydney to spend some time exploring the Blue Mountains. One of the tourist attractions that we visited is a lovely rock formation known as The Three Sisters. This rock formation was carved (by erosion) out of ~250 million year old sandstone.
Sandstone building stones used in a bridge in North Sydney.
During my recent travels in Australia, I noticed quitea bit of sandstone around Sydney. Therefore, I was not particularly surprised to also see quite a few sandstone building stones around the city. For example, the stones shown in the above picture, which shows part of a bridge in North Sydney.
By the way, I’m back home in South Africa now and won’t be travelling for a little while. So, I hope to have time to write up several posts on my recent Australian trip. Stay tuned!
Georneys 