ORIZA SATIVA-2217450-VICTOR HARBOUR FIELD TRIP 2020

Victor Harbour Geologic Field Trip

Geological Processes, 2020

Aim: To develop skill in making geological field observations; or to put it simply, we will
learn to look at rocks and make some sense of them.

This exercise to be handed up at the next lab (counts as a one week lab)

Enroute to Victor Harbor, we will pass over several escarpments (fault blocks) of the Mt Lofty Ranges.
These are the Eden Fault (by Flinders and Bedford Park), Clarendon Fault (smallest fault block) and
the mighty Willunga Fault (to the south of McClaren Vale). These faults are recent geologic features
(last few million years) and still active; they have micro and not so micro earthquakes associated with
them.
Stop 1: Blanche Point and Willunga Basin Stratigraphy

Stop 1

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 Stratigraphy of the Willunga Basin

The mid-coast area south of Adelaide has many areas of sea cliffs which expose Late Eocene and
Oligocene limestone units (mid Cenozoic). These limestones were deposited in shallow marine conditions,
similar to Gulf St Vincent today. The diagram to the left is a composite stratigraphic section of the
Tertiary section along the coastline from
Christies Beach to Sellicks Beach. At Blanche
Point, The Gull Rock Member, Perkana Member,
Tuit Member and Chinaman Gully Member are
exposed.

Stop 1. Stratigraphy of the Port Willunga Area/Willunga Basin

At Gull Rock, the Gull Rock Member of the Blanche Point Formation is well exposed in the wave cut
cliffs and platforms. The Gull Rock Member has abundant gastropods. This member grades
(transitions) into the Perkana Member of the Blanche Point Formation; this transition probably
represents a change in sediment input with land derived clay and silt mixing with calcium carbonate
shells.

There are abundant Turritella Gastropods in the Gull Rock Member at the locality, so many in fact that
the question has been raised whether they represent some kind of catastrophic event and thus are a
Death Assemblage. Or do they simply represent business as usual and thus represent an Attrition
Assemblage.

Questions:

1) Looking south from Maslin Bay you can see the lower strata dip gently towards Blanche
Point and Gull Rock, about halfway up the cliff, these gently dipping strata are truncated
up an overlying horizontal layer of strongly cemented, in part, overhanging sandstone.
What type of unconformity is this? What does it tell you about the geological history?

Answer:
 The angular unconformity represents a 20 Ma hiatus in sedimentation between the
Eocene sediments of the Tortachilla Limestone and Blanche Point Formation below
and the Neogene sediments of the Hallett Cove Sandstone above.
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  The several distinct geologic events are; first, original sediments were deposited in
a horizontal manner and became compressed to form sedimentary rock. Then
tectonic forces deformed the rock, causing it to tilt, and erosion weathered the
rock. Finally, the second period of sediment deposition occurred on top of the
tilted layer, which also turned into rock, causing the angular unconformity.

Figure 1. Southward view towards Blanche Point from Maslin Bay

 Cliff erosion is evident at Blanche Point south of Maslin Beach, where erosion has
formed a cliffed coast with a sea stack, Gull Rock. At an angular unconformity, the
older rock layers are deformed, tilted and usually slightly eroded before the
deposition of a new rock layer. Then tectonic forces deformed the rock, causing it
to tilt, and erosion weathered the rock.

2) Describe the sediments of the Gull Rock Member. What can you tell about the
palaeoenvironment?

Answer:
 The Gull Rock Member is a sediment that hard silica-rich layers which
alternating with softer carbonate-rich layers. The Gull Rock Member is overlain
by the softer Perkana Member (sponge spicule-rich opal, carbonate and clay).

 The palaeoenvironmental interpretation of these mixed hard (silica-rich) and

soft (carbonate-rich) sediments is a relatively quiet sea-floor setting, below
wave base, occasionally disrupted by storm waves. There is no modern analogue
to these sediments in offshore southern Australia except in deep waters (>200
m deep) on the upper continental slope. Such water depths are unlikely for
Blanche Point deposition, given the lateral gradation of these sediments into
near shore, low-gradient paralic to strandline siliciclastics.

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  The fossils imply open-ocean conditions. Lack of benthic algae suggests
subphotic sea-floor deposition. Progressively darker sediments imply increasingly
eutrophic conditions. Abundant gastropod diatoms indicate clear surface waters.
Profilic sponges and spiculite indicate abundant dissolved silica and high trophic
resources. Finally, ostracods, while conforming the lowered oxygen levels,
indicate water depths of 50±100 m with poor circulation and cool temperatures.

Figure 2. Fossil of Gastropod

3) Walking south along the coast to Pt Willunga, do the sediments get older or younger?
Why?
Answer:
 The base of the cliffs along the coastline from Blanche Point, south to Port
Willunga township, reveal progressively younger strata.

 Because in the coastal outcrops, the Pt Willunga Formation is genarally a

yellow/fawn/white coarse-grained bryozoal limestone containing amounts of clay.
And based on the Stratigraphy of the Willunga Basin (in Diagram above), the top
of the Blanche Point Formation is succeeded by the Chinaman Gully and the Port
Willunga Formations. At Port Willunga this deposition of non-marine sediments is
represented by the Chinaman Gully Formation. The bryozoan- and echinoidrich
fossil assemblages that are preserved in these sediments of the new Southern
Ocean are much more like modern shallow-water marine faunas than those of the
Blanche Point Formation that lived in the old AustraloAntarctic Gulf. This is
strong corroborating evidence that the modern ocean, with stronger water
circulation and better ventilated with more oxygen.

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Stop 2: Granite Island

A widespread group of Ordovician granites (about 490 million years old) are exposed along the Victor
Harbour coastline. These are the rocks that are exposed at Remarkable Rocks on KI as well as
exposed in small hills around Keith and Padthaway. Drilling and geophysics has shown that these
surface outcrops are largely connected at shallow depths to form a large body of granite. Estimates of
the depth of this granite during its crystallisation are from 10-15 km.

On Granite Island there are two kinds of granite. The first type is a coarse-grained feldspar-rich type
with large (several cm’s) potassium feldspar crystals. This is referred to as “porphyritic granite;”
porphyritic refers to the grain-size difference between the feldspar and the rest of the minerals in
the rock. The second type is a grey granite that is finer-grained than the porphyritic granite. There
are also abundant xenoliths, probably of two origins; 1) fragments of Kanmantoo metasediments and 2)
an early crystallized, fine-grained phase of the granite that has abundant biotite. These xenoliths
could have been an early crystallised version of the granite which was then ripped off the margin of
the magma chamber and mixed into the magma (a common process in large magma chambers).

Questions:

1) Work out the sequence of the two granites and xenoliths. What came first and what came
later. Can you make observations to support your argument?
Answer:
 The sequence that came first and what came later is:
Xenoliths- Porphyritic granite - finer grained granite

Xenoliths are different types of rock embedded in igneous rock.

Most of the time, a xenolith is a rock embedded in magma while the magma was cooling.
Xenoliths are torn from deep cracks, or pipes, in the Earth surface. Magma rises to the
Earth surface through these pipes between the Earth crust and mantle. As the molten
material rises, it tears off bits and pieces of the magma pipe in which it is travelling.
These bits and pieces, trapped in the magma but not melting into it, become xenoliths. The
conspicuous coarsely crystalline (‘porphyritic’) granites that mostly appear in granite
island. These are igneous rocks that formed at considerable depth in the crust, and at one
stage were molten and thus able to intrude and engulf the surrounding Kanmantoo Group
metasediments. They contain coarse crystals of pink to grey feldspar, quartz, and black
mica (biotite), which slowly crystallised in the rock melt (magma) as it invaded the
metasediments. Therefore, this can be said that the xenoliths metasediments are older
than the porphyritic granite.

The age relationship between the fine-grained granite and the border facies porphyritic
granite is not clear from the nature of their mutual contact. The porphyritic granite
contains a number of unaltered metasedimentary rock xenoliths and is therefore
considered to be in close juxtaposition to the roof the intrusion and considered that the
porphyritic granite to be older than the fine-grained granite. However, the gradational
contact between the two may indicate that the fine-grained granite was emplaced prior to
complete solidification of the porphyritic granite.

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Figure 3. Metasediments xenolith in Porphyritic granite

Figure 4. Finer-grained granite

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2) Find a representative porphyritic granite and describe it (type and size and colour of
minerals).

Descriptions:
Type : Igneous Rock (Plutonic)
Grain: coarse-grained
Rock color: combination between white and gray.
Texture: Porphyritic, with large phenocryst of potassium feldspar and quartz
Mineral compositions:
1. Quartz
Colour white, clear, cleavage
2. Feldsfar
 K-Feldsfar (potassium); colour: white-gray, to-pink, cleavage
 Plagioclase; white or gray color, cleavage
3. Biotite
Colour black, mica
4. Other minerals, namely secondary minerals that are formed due to changes in the main
minerals (the last level of magma residue that follows the weathering process and
difficult to be identified by the eyes).

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Maps of Granite Island and Rosetta Head (Talbot and Nesbitt, 1968).

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Stop 3. Rosetta Head-Petrel Cove. We will spend an hour or two here examining a variety of
features and complete the exercise listed below. Of major importance here is that the contact
between the Kanmantoo metasediments and the granite is exposed in the rocky shoreline.

1) Overview sketch of shoreline should include (a) contact with granite, (b) strike lines (and
direction of dip) of Kanmantoo metasediments, (c) areas of boulders dominated by granitic
rocks. (you may like to indicate these features on the aerial photo to help you.

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 2) There is an abundance of metasedimentary rock in this area, yet the shoreline is
dominated by granite. Why is this?

3) There are many small-scale sedimentary structures that can be seen in the metasediments
such as load casts, cross bedding, and graded bedding. Find and sketch an example.

Along the shoreline, notice the following features:

1) The Petrel Cover region has a complex deformation history with at least 3 episodes
of foliation development. A pervasive schistosity forms an axial planar foliation to
mesoscopic, upright folds developed in the wave cut platform. This is defined by the
preferential orientation of biotite and generally dips steeply south-east. Crenulation
cleavage is formed in the metasiltstones in some places. Provide a sketch of the
crenulation cleavage (you may need your instructor to help you find an example).

3) Find an igneous intrusion and describe it (there are dolerite dikes and quartz-

line
feldspar-muscovite-tourmaline pegmatites – the dolerite dikes may be hard to find
depending on the tide).
4) Find a representative granite boulder and describe it. Is it any different than the
porphyritic granite on Granite Island?
5) Find and describe the two types of xenoliths. Are there any other types that do
not seem to fit the two types seen on Granite Island?

line of strike

direction of
dip

Strike and Dip; Strike is the intersection of a horizontal plane with a dipping plane; the intersection of
two planes makes a line. The dip is the angle from the horizontal of the dipping plane.

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Aerial photograph of Petrel Cove.

direct

Scale bar: 100m

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