Fire and Ice

This week most people I have had contact with in the States have asked me if I am close to the fires in Victoria. The fires are northeast of Melbourne, which is about the same distance from Adelaide as Detroit is from New York City. However, it is a major event here which everyone is concerned about. Bush fires do happen near Adelaide and are taken very seriously. Relief efforts are very strong and there is an amazing amount of support. Our office usually has a 'beer and pizza' night every second Friday of the month. This Friday the usual funds for beer and pizza were donated to the Red Cross, and instead there was a pot-luck morning tea, where everyone brought something (a lot of sweets!) and a collection was taken up for the fire relief. We raised about $1800... The photo below was shared with me and I had to include it here. There was a video of this on CNN which you might have caught as well. Some of the stories coming out of the fires are amazing and heart wrenching. You hear so much it is hard to sort it all out. One person told me that the fires had been burning along one track for about 20 km, when the wind shifted 90 degrees and then there were 20-km fronts. It was very quick and caught people without warning. My thoughts and prayers are with those who are still dealing with this disaster. There are still fires burning, but the state of alert seems to be reduced for the moment.



Yesterday I went to a park called Morialta to the northeast of Adelaide (http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/parks/sanpr/morialta/index.html) . It is near where I went last week, but much more spectacular. It is a canyon with three large (but currently dry) water falls. The pictures below are from my hike and typify the scenery (remember you can click on them to get a bigger picture). I was hoping to see more animals but they remained elusive. There were, however, people rock climbing on the crags (all top-roping); it looked fun but challenging. The bird population was robust as usual. I heard, but did not see, a kookaburra which is a *loud* (think bird calls from Johny Weissmuller Tarzan movies) large, kingfisher.



Today I went back near where I snorkeled to a park called Hallett Cove (http://www.marion.sa.gov.au/web/webmar.nsf/lookup/Hallett+Cove+Conservation+Park). It was pretty spectacular, geologically speaking. A coworker had recommended I go there sometime ago. He was correct. There are four main geologic stories represented. The oldest rocks are shallow sea sediments that were laid down in the Precambrian, 600 million years ago (mya). 500 mya, they were highly folded in a mountain building episode. For the next 130 million years they were eroded until about 280 to 270 mya, when there was an ice-age (Permian). The Precambrian rocks were buffed and scratched by the glaciers and a glacial lake developed depositing both fine materials and boulders/dropstones. The glacial material remained on top and did not get very lithofied and now looks much like Pleistocene (Ice Age 10,000 to 2 mya) material I have dealt with most of my career in the Northeast, Ohio, and Michigan. About 4 mya (Pliocene) a shallow sea covered the glacial deposits and a layer of fossiliferous sandstone was deposited. Finally, during the Pleistocene the area was an alluvial plain with a thick sequence of silt being deposited. Now the neat part: over the last couple of million years the Mount Lofty range was uplifted and ultimately caused erosion to cut down through all of it exposing the whole story. The pictures below don't do it justice. The white mound is called sugar loaf (imagine that!) and is the glacial lake deposit. I have drilled through sediments just like it many times in the Northeast US (only 268 million years younger!)! The tide pools along the shore were very interesting and brimming with life. There was a kestrel that soared on the updraft along the shore, with some company - apparently this is a good place to fly RC gliders. The gliders didn't seem to bother the kestrel. All in all a good day out for a geologist...