Geological time

This field guide refers to units of geological time using

terms which might be unfamiliar to some people. It is
recommended that you download a copy of the time scale
(www.sa.gsa.org.au) and consult the relevant sections when
necessary.

Introduction
MASLIN BAY AND Since late in the 19th Century, the scenically attractive cliff
sections at Maslin Bay and Port Willunga have inspired
PORT WILLUNGA painters, field naturalists and collectors, teachers and
students, and geologists and palaeontologists. From about
30 000 to 18 000 years ago Earth’s climate was intensely
Geological Trail cold; ice sheets covered much of North America and Europe,
the Antarctic ice sheet was at its maximum thickness
and extent, and glaciers formed in Tasmania and on the
southern highlands of eastern Australia. With so much
water frozen in place on the land, sea-levels were 120–
130 metres lower than they are today. With the onset of our
present globally warmer climate, substantial amounts of
glacial meltwater returned to the oceans, which reached
present sea-level about 7000 years ago. These coastal
cliffs are thus relatively new features that have formed as
a consequence of marine erosion. Today the west-facing
outcrops are kept fresh by the back-cutting action of the
sea and the washing effect of the winter storms. The rocks
are all sedimentary strata (layers) and their succession
through geological time is readily grasped as one traverses
north to south.
A walking trail through geological time The strata offer a glimpse into the Willunga Embayment,
the rocks upon which the soils of the McLaren wine region
developed. Their broad scientific and environmental
significance is high, because no other locality in Australia
and very few on the planet display a critical episode in
geological time so well. This cycle spanning 42 to 32 million
years (myr) ago records the great transformation from a
greenhouse world, when polar ice sheets were small or
absent, to the icehouse world of today with its substantial
ice sheets.
The Willunga Embayment is a relatively small, triangular,
downwarped area which is bounded to the north by a high, Figure 1 Top: Relative positions of Australia and Antarctica following
up-faulted block of very much older folded rocks, and to the separation; heavy black lines show the position of the spreading ridge. The
south by the high escarpment of the still active Willunga Fault. landmass that includes New Zealand separated eastwards. Coloured areas
Along the eastern margin of the parent St Vincent Basin, a signify marine sediments which were deposited within the Australo-Antarctic
series of closely spaced, curved faults, roughly parallel to the Gulf that formed between the Australian and Antarctic continents. The
position of the St Vincent Basin is shown.
Willunga Fault, define and control several similar embayments
Bottom: The form of the St Vincent Basin is controlled by north-south
with matching sedimentary successions. However, the most trending faults, shown as heavy black lines. The basin is bound by the eastern
complete and most easily studied strata are those of the margin of Yorke Peninsula to the west and by the Mount Lofty Ranges to the
Willunga Embayment which outcrop in the cliffs at Maslin Bay east. Also shown are the Noarlunga and Willunga Embayments, which lie
and Port Willunga. within the St Vincent Basin.
The Willunga Embayment with its sediment infill is one of about halfway up the cliff, these
several sub-basins on the eastern side of the St Vincent Basin gently dipping strata are truncated to Adelaide

(Figs 1, 3 and 4). The basin and the sedimentary succession by an overlying horizontal layer Maslin Bay and
which was subsequently deposited therein were initiated
when Australia and Antarctica began their rapid separation
of strongly cemented, in part
overhanging sandstone. This angular
Port Willunga
(continental drift). During Eocene time, 45–42 myr before
the present, Australia accelerated its migration to the north unconformity represents a 20 myr Maslin Beach Road

(from <2 to >5 mm/year). Changes in the Earth’s stress field break in deposition between the Sealed road Rocla Pioneer
reactivated lines of weakness in the region of the ancient Mt Paleogene sediments of the South old
sand
sand
quarry
sand
quarry
Geological walking trail
Lofty Ranges. The outcome was birth of the St Vincent Basin, Maslin Sand, Tortachilla Limestone quarry

Road
now about 42 myr old and currently two-thirds flooded by and Blanche Point Formation below Parking
the modern Gulf St Vincent. and the Neogene sediments of the Watercourse Maslin
Beach
When the St Vincent Basin was born, the incoming sea was Hallett Cove Sandstone above. Sherriff Road
a large inlet from the Australo-Antarctic Gulf of the Indian
Ocean. At 42 myr ago that gulf had less than 10 myr to live, Below the angular unconformity

Road
for it was soon absorbed into the new Southern Ocean as new When the Eocene sea swept in, it
MASLIN

South
ocean floor grew rapidly between Tasmania and Antarctica, formed estuaries in the inset valleys 0 metres 500 1000
and the Indian and Pacific Oceans were connected for the

De
into which the South Maslin Sand BAY et

nn
t
first time. There are strong reasons to identify this seaway was deposited (Site 1). Conditions Cree
k
connection as the beginning of the modern ocean and
were marine but stressed, probably Gull Rock
1
modern marine life. Blanche Point 2 Thomas Road
by low oxygen and low salinity, 3 Tuitt Road
Our 19th Century geological pioneers admired these so marine life was not abundant.
Perkana Point
spectacular strata but lacked the grand theories that inform However, when a normal, warm sea caravan

Road
park
our modern observations. Such theories include plate was established the communities

Main
tectonics, global greenhouse-icehouse change, oceanic

Coach
flourished and the limey skeletons
circulation, the ages of rocks at the far ends of the Earth, even

Hill
organic evolution itself. are diverse and abundant — 4 Chinaman
bryozoans, molluscs and sea urchins ALDINGA Gully
Bourke Road

Bowering
especially but many others too. 5
Access These conditions produced the richly
BAY

The geological succession is best walked from north to fossiliferous Tortachilla Limestone
6

Old
south, for the strata dip and become younger southwards. sediments, which are best observed
Port Ald inga
As shown on Figure 2, access from South Road is easy. at the base of the stepped pathway Willunga
Cr
e ek
There is a good walking track above the beaches from (1) from the car park at the top of the
to (6) and this sector covers most of the geology. The cliff Snapper Point Quinliven Road Aldinga
sections are reached easily, the walking is pleasant on the
sand with some scrambling over large rocks which can be Figure 2 Location of sites along the Maslin
hazardous when wet. Numerous rock falls illustrate the Bay and Port Willunga Geological Trail. 203874_002
dangers of getting too close to cliffs. Blanche Point is seen
best at low tide, but is generally accessible at most other
times.

Maslin Bay 1 2
Looking south from Maslin Bay village or anywhere on
the cliff or beach, one can observe that the lower strata
dip gently towards Blanche Point and Gull Rock. However,

View from Site 2, Maslin Bay, looking south. Eocene South Maslin Sand and Tortachilla
Limestone in the foreground, Pleistocene units (see Table 1) in the background. (Photo 409036)
cliff (Site 2). Many exposures of this formation are green
in colour due to the presence of grains of glauconite, a
distinctive mineral that is characteristic of low-oxygen
marine environments.
The Blanche Point Formation contrasts strongly with the
Tortachilla Limestone, even though it too is rich in fossils
(Site 3, adjacent Blanche Point and Perkana Point). Fossils
of turreted snails especially are extremely abundant in
some layers, intensive burrows in others, sponge gardens
in yet others. The unweathered sediments are dark grey
(not white as suggested by the word ‘Blanche’) and
rich in finely disseminated opal, derived from sponges
and diatoms. This points to abundant runoff forming a
brackish, low-density surface layer on the sea, inhibiting
circulation and gas exchange with the atmosphere. This
condition affected the marginal waters of the Australo-
Antarctic Gulf whose northern and southern shores were
lined with subtropical rainforests in the Late Eocene.
Blanche and Perkana Points separate two beautiful
sandy beaches. Blanche Point is floored by the very well
cemented Tortachilla Limestone, an Eocene sea floor
now being exhumed by the modern sea. To the north the
sea erodes the much less resistant South Maslin Sand.
Perkana Point is floored by the very hard layers of the
Gull Rock Member. Further south the sea erodes the very
Blanche Point and Gull Rock soon after low tide. The hardened Eocene sea
floor on the Tortachilla Limestone is just below the modern sea surface. Lower
half of cliff, Gull Rock Member, then the soft, easily eroded Perkana Member.
Overhang with patches of deep shadow is the Hallett Cove Sandstone. White
at top, Burnham Limestone. (Photo 409038)
Perkana Point, showing Blanche Point Formation (banded Gull Rock and
soft Perkana Members). (Photo 409039)
soft Perkana Member. So, the dip of the strata and their
varying resistance to erosion determines the shape of the
coastline.
Above the angular unconformity
The cemented Pliocene Hallett Cove Sandstone juts
out from the cliff and is found in abundant fossiliferous
slabs that have fallen onto the beach. Around the coasts
of South Australia and locally, it is variable in hardness
and fossil content, but its fossils indicate very warm
conditions — not as warm as in Eocene time, but warmer
than in the following Pleistocene time.
The crumbly, poorly fossiliferous Burnham Limestone,
the red-white Ochre Cove Formation and olive-green
Ngaltinga Clay, and surface calcrete are also easily
viewed from the stepped concrete pathway leading
from the carpark to the beach (Site 2). These sediments
represent contrasting environments during the
Pleistocene Epoch, somewhat warmer and wetter in the
earlier part and cooler and drier in the later part. They
also reflect the rise of the young (Pleistocene) modern Mt
Lofty Ranges, increasing erosion and delivering sediment
here and further out into the St Vincent Basin at times of
lower sea level.
Port Willunga 3 4 5 6
The base of the cliffs along the coastline from Blanche
Point, south to Port Willunga township, reveal
progressively younger strata that were deposited during
Late Eocene, then Oligocene time. The top of the Blanche
Point Formation is succeeded by the Chinaman Gully and
the Port Willunga Formations. Above the unconformity, the
Pliocene Hallett Cove Sandstone, the Burnham Limestone
and other younger strata remain accessible.
After deposition of the Blanche Point Formation, there
are places under Adelaide and on Yorke Peninsula where
there were valleys, up to 50 metres deep, cut into the
Eocene sediments. These valleys were then backfilled with
non-marine sands and muds, before the sea returned. This
happened exactly at the time when (on global evidence)
the ice sheet on Antarctica first grew to seriously large
dimensions and global sea level was lowered accordingly.
At Port Willunga this deposition of non-marine sediments
is represented by the Chinaman Gully Formation (Site 4).
Following deposition of the Chinaman Gully Formation,
the sea returned to record a succession of marine
environments — shore sands, deeper water sands and
muds, increasingly limey (Aldinga Member of the Port
Willunga Formation; Site 5). The bryozoan- and echinoid-
rich 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 Australo-
Antarctic Gulf. This is strong corroborating evidence that
the modern ocean, with stronger water circulation and
better ventilated with more oxygen, took a major step
forward during this time at the expense of the poorly
oxygenated marine environments of the late Eocene. The
replacement of sponge gardens by bryozoan gardens is
a telling sign of a shift from a greenhouse world in the
Eocene to an icehouse world in the Oligocene.
Clarendon
Para
Eden
Fault
Fault
Fault
Adelaide Plains
Meadows
Fault
10 km
Noarlunga
Willunga
Fault
Embayment
Willunga
Embayment 203874_003
Figure 3 Simplified block diagram of the Adelaide region showing the
uplifted fault blocks and sedimentary basins.
 HOLOCENE non-marine clays, clayey

NEOGENE
NGALTINGA CLAY sands, calcrete and other
PLEISTOCENE OCHRE COVE FORMATION soil horizons: marine
BURNHAM LIMESTONE limestone at base
calcareous sandstone,
PLIOCENE HALLETT COVE SANDSTONE sandy limestone

PORT WILLUNGA
bryozoal limestones,

FORMATION
RUWARUNG
MEMBER silts, clays
chert nodules
EARLY
OLIGOCENE 6
ALDINGA bryozoal limestones,
5 MEMBER clays, sands

varicoloured clays, silts,

4 CHINAMAN GULLY FORMATION sands
TUIT MEMBER hard (silica-rich) and soft
(carbonate-rich) layers

BLANCHE POINT
50 m

FORMATION
PERKANA spicule-rich
LATE MEMBER opal/carbonate/clay
EOCENE 3
hard (silica-rich) and soft
GULL ROCK

PALEOGENE
(carbonate-rich)
MEMBER

TUKETJA MEMBER calcareous glauconitic clay

2 rubbly limestone and sandy
TORTACHILLA LIMESTONE ferruginous limestone

1
ferruginous quartz sands,
Chinaman Gully Formation at Chinaman Gully. This is the brown and green SOUTH MASLIN SAND cross-bedded, glauconic
unit separating the Blanche Point Formation (covered under the pink-flowering
bushes) from the Port Willunga Formation (flanking the footbridge). (Photo
0
409040) MIDDLE
EOCENE
cross-bedded quartz
sands
NORTH MASLIN SAND
clay lenses with
terrestrial flora

sands and clays with

CAPE JERVIS FORMATION pebbles and boulders
PERMIAN
OLDER FOLDED ‘BASEMENT’ ROCKS
203874-001

Figure 4 Geologic section showing the succession of strata which

Cliffs at Port Willunga, north of remains of jetty (off photo to right). The
Port Willunga Formation is faulted—the brown layer at head of tallest
figure is displaced upward by about 2 m to the left. Large slabs on beach are
fossiliferous Hallett Cove Sandstone, fallen from strata at lowest green bush
on skyline. White at top, Burnham Limestone. (Photo 409041)
comprise the rocks of the Maslin Beach and Port Willunga areas. The older
The hard sandstone of the Port Willunga Formation juts out above the
folded ‘basement’ rocks and the glacial sediments of the Permian Cape
Chinaman Gully Formation. (Photo T015640)
Jervis Formation do not outcrop in the cliff exposures. These units were
once exposed in the excavated base of an old sand quarry immediately
north of Maslin Beach. This quarry has now been rehabilitated and today
none of the stratigraphic units can be observed in outcrop. This diagram
should be interpreted in conjunction with the Geological Time Scale (www. which once resembled the purple siltstones that
sa.gsa.org.au). A wavey line between an underlying and an overlying unit, outcrop at Hallett Cove. The sands and gravels are the
e.g. Tortachilla Limestone (underlying) and the Tuketja Member of the oldest sediments in the St Vincent Basin and are not
Blanche Point Formation (overlying), signifies an erosional surface.
exposed on the coast. The latitude was about 60°S
(25° further south than now), but the climate was
both warmer and wetter than that of today. Fossil
Additional sites to visit plant remains preserved in fine sediments, exposed in
quarries at Maslin Beach and at Golden Grove, signify
An understanding of the geology can be extended at
plant communities which resembled the subtropical
two additional localities, one north and the other south
rainforests of today. This outcrop is perched above
of Maslin Bay:
most of the Willunga Embayment due to Pleistocene
• A low cutting on the southern side of Chapel Hill uplift of the Clarendon-Moana fault block. It was also
Road, 2 km east of Chapel Hill winery, McLaren upstream of the meandering waterways and billabongs
Vale, where ferruginised sands and gravels of North of Eocene times, the sediments of which were exposed
Maslin Sand overlie deeply weathered white clay, during sand quarrying.
 Table 1 Succession of strata
Strata (youngest at top, oldest at bottom) Age (Ma=million years
before present)
younger group (flat lying strata ) Neogene (Miocene to Today)
Calcrete crust (soil limestone) Pleistocene (<0.5 Ma)
Ngaltinga Clay (olive-coloured) probably Pleistocene (>0.5 Ma)
aeolian
Ochre Cove Formation (red-white mottled) Pleistocene (>0.8 Ma)
warm and wet conditions
Burnham Limestone (thin crumbly Pleistocene (~1.7 Ma)
limestone)
Hallett Cove Sandstone (very fossiliferous, Pliocene (about 3 Ma)
large slabs on the beach, sometimes soft
sand). Shallow seas, warmer than today,
marking the last Neogene warm period
before the late Neogene or Quaternary ice
age set in after 3 Ma.
Unconformity (low angle, representing a Hiatus of ~32 myrs
North Maslin Sand, iron-stained to ochre colours, overlies deeply weathered break in the succession—an hiatus) (Maslin Bay) or ~28 myrs
siltstones having an age of about 600 myr. The contact of the two units is an (Pt Willunga) or 18 myrs
unconformity representing an hiatus of more than 550 million years .Chapel (Sellicks Beach)
Hill Road, east of Chapel Hill winery. (Photo 409037) older group (strata dipping at about 2° to Palaeogene (Paleocene to
the south) Oligocene)
Port Willunga Formation (sandstones, Late Oligocene (24–26 Ma)
limestones) Ruwarung Member (above cave Sellicks Beach
ceiling at former jetty) Aldinga Member Early Oligocene (30–33 Ma)
(below ceiling) Port Willunga
Chinaman Gully Formation (clays with Earliest Oligocene
• South of Sellicks Beach, Esplanade south of Gulf View bright weathering reds browns below, (33.5 Ma)
greens above)
Road, beach walk of~2 km. Here the Port Willunga
Blanche Point Formation Late Eocene (34–36 Ma)
Formation is exposed at low tide in the shore platform Tuit Member (thin, snail-rich, often under sand)
and in the adjacent cliffs. The platform with rock Perkana Member (soft, sponge spicule-rich)
pools is cut into the limestone by the modern sea. The Gull Rock Member (hard, banded, snail-rich
layers)
limestones lying unconformably on much older strata Steeply dipping Port Willunga Formation as occurring at the additional
Tuketja Member (thin, green glauconitic)
have been dragged up to high angles by movements locality at the southern end of Sellicks Beach. (Photo T015642)
Tortachilla Limestone (very rich in fossils) Middle to Late Eocene
on the Willunga Fault — the boundary between the Upper member (green, snail-rich) (37–38 Ma)
Willunga Embayment and the Willunga Fault block Lower member (bryozoan-rich)
and associated with the uplift of the modern Mt Lofty Be prepared when bushwalking: South Maslin Sand (sparse marine fossils) Middle Eocene (38–39 Ma)
Ranges. This uplift caused invigorated erosion and • Allow at least half a day to walk the trail. North Maslin Sand (sands, gravels, clays, Middle Eocene (40–42 Ma)
deposition of an alluvial fan comprising gravel, sand rich terrestrial plant fossils in oxbow lakes)
• Wear sturdy shoes, hat and apply sunscreen even during winter
and mud, sediments that are exposed in the cliff face months.
above the beach, and which are again being eroded to • Carry sufficient food and drinking water.
form the modern beach sediments. • Safety First! Keep to the defined walking trail except when on the
beaches; avoid overhanging rock strata which could potentially fall;
References stay well back from the tops of cliffs.
Talbot, J.L. and Nesbitt, R.W. 1968. Geological excursions in the Mount • Inform a responsible person of your proposed route and expected
Lofty Ranges and the Fleurieu Peninsula. Angus and Robertson, time of return.
South Australian Division
Sydney, 60p. • Weather conditions can change quickly, ensure you have www.sa.gsa.org.au
appropriate wet weather clothing.
Acknowledgement • Be advised that the southern end of Maslin Bay is reserved for both
Original text prepared by B. McGowran and Geological Society of clad and unclad bathing.
Australia (SA Division) Field Guide Subcommittee. 2011 203874