Lismore GEMFEST 2013

Back from another trip to Hospital for my daughter meant that we were ready to go out and enjoy the late Autumn sunshine. It was good timing too because Lismore Gemfest had started for the weekend.

Gemfest is a lovely combination of professional and amateur sellers of gems, minerals, fossils and jewelry. I found Frank, the fellow from Sydney that I'd bought some good mineral specimens off last year so I added some more to my collection. Frank is an interesting seller because he sells what he finds and what he finds is in Australia, so you know you are getting local examples. Mind you my collection is really just a selection of boring looking minerals with very little value. For instance this time I got hold of some muscovite, tourmaline, wolframite and epidote - quite valueless but interesting to me. The value is in the fun of collecting.

Again, this year Gemfest was full of great diversity of sellers and some good food stalls. I enjoyed my steak sandwich for lunch. I managed to take a few snaps of the end of Saturday but I forgot to take pictures inside the professional dealers area. Oh, well. Something to do next year. In the mean time here are a few snaps:

Ahh Ahh

Readers of this blog will probably notice I have an intense interest in volcanology. Volcanology has a wide variety of aspects some of which I’m comfortable, some less so. These aspects can be the chemistry of molten materials, the physics of earthquakes or the dynamic processes of pyroclastic flows. Volcanology and igneous rocks more generally seem to have their own weird language that can stop you and make you turn to a dictionary.

One of my favourite words in the ‘language’ of geology is the name of a large scale structure of lava flows. It is called aa. So, turning to a dictionary (this time the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form) you get the following possible definitions:

No consonants! Does this seem ominous? 
It's with rough-surfaced lava synonymous.
Yet the thought it conveys
With two capital A's 
Is, of course, Alcoholics Anonymous. 
By Chris J. Strolin


I'm ascending a gentle volcano; 
The climb's not the cause of my strain. 
No, This lava is stressed, 
Pretty jagged at best. 
Cut my feet on sharp aa — the pain, Oh! 
By Aliza


On Hawaii the lava's aflame 
As observers, in awe, cry its name. 
When that molten rock's oozing 
Down paths of its choosing, 
It's "A'a!" that tourists exclaim. 
By David

Probably one of the more interesting dictionary definitions I’ve seen. I Hope that helps with understanding? If these are a little bit obscure you can always visit my Glossary.

Greeny Stuff at Port Macquarie

Serpentinite at Port Macquarie

A fascinating area of the northern rivers is right at Port Macquarie. This is a post that I’ve wanted to start for a long time but because the area is quite complex I’ve baulked at the prospect. I’ve just wanted to discuss too much, to dive into the deep end. I now realise that I should just start with an introduction to the formation of the fascinating rocks and come back for many more posts about more specific details in the near future.

The picture to the right shows the nature of one of the rock types at Port Macquarie. If I recall correctly this photo was taken at the southern end of Flynns Beach. It is a characteristic rock and given the odd shapes preserved in it implies quite an interesting history. The rock is serpentinite in two forms. The first being the banded appearing one which is called serpentinite schist. The second is a block of serpentinite which has not had the schistose fabric developed in it. I’ve discussed serpentinite occurring elsewhere such as at Baryulgil in previous posts but as far as Serpentinite goes the Port Macquarie area has heaps of it.

Serpentinite is a rock mainly comprised of the mineral group Serpentine. This is a very silica poor rock formed by the regional metamorphism of Olivine rich rocks such as Dunite or Peridotite. These parent rocks are from deep below the oceanic crust in the deepest parts of a layered sequence called Ophiolite and because of this it is rarely preserved on land. The metamorphism of the serpentinite is actually at the same time as large blocks of the Dunite and Peridotite rich oceanic crust are thrust and rotated during tectonic plate collision. Because serpentinite tends to be ‘slippery’ it is mostly present around major regional fault systems where it is ‘squeezed’ into place. However, its relationship to other nearby tectonic blocks is detailed and requires a separate blog post on its own.

At Port Macquarie the parent rock appears to have been a calcium rich variety of Peridotite called Harzburgite. There are also other rocks mixed in with the Serpentite, so much so that the area is often referred to as a melange. These other rocks are sometimes (but not always) part of the Ophiolite. For example slightly shallower ones such as gabbro which has been metamorphosed to rocks called Blue Schists. Also occurring are non Ophiolite rocks such as marble and other types of schist. Because of the complexity some 'inclusions' in the melange are from a different source than the Ophiolite, that is a story for another post.

As for the age of the Serpentinite unit, direct dating is impossible due to metamorphism re-setting the dating clock of the rock. The best that can be achieved is the last date of metamorphism. Even then the ultramafic (silica poor) nature of the rock means that minerals that can be used for dating (such as zircons) are uncommon or simply absent. Therefore the age of the Port Macquarie Serpentinite is only estimated from the surrounding rocks. However recent work by Nutman et al (2013) has narrowed the age of metamorphism and probable emplacement of the serpentinite to 251-220Ma which is the late Permian to early Triassic. How they found the date is quite interesting with adopting multiple techniques physical, nuclear and chemical.

Bibliography/references:

*Aitchison, J.C. & Ireland, T.R. (1995). Age Profile of Ophiolitic Rocks across the Late Palaeozoic New England Orogen, New South Wales: Implications for tectonic models. Australian Journal of Earth Sciences. Vol.42.
*Nutman, A.P., Buckman, S., Hidaka, H., Kamiichi, T., Belousova, E., Aitchinson, J.C. 2013. Middle Carboniferous-Triassic eclogite-blueschist blocks within a serpentinite melange at Port Macquarie, eastern Australia: Implications for the evolution of Gondwana’s eastern margin. Gondwana Research.
*Och, D.J., Leitch, E.C. & Caprarelli, G. 2007. Geological Units of the Port Macquarie-Tacking Point tract, north-eastern Port Macquarie Block, Mid North Coast Region of New South Wales. Quarterly Notes of the Geological Survey of New South Wales. Vol.126.

100,000 Geotourism Maps

Geoz had an article this week titled New South Wales holidays all mapped out. This article refers to a new map which has been developed which should help those that would like to know more about the physical features of the areas they are touring. The Geoz article is reproduced below:

The first state Geotourism Map in Australia has been released by Cartoscope Pty. Ltd. This NSW map features 96 sites and has an accompanying website so that users can get extensive geological detail in layman's terms and maps on each site. The map was supported by a TQUAL grant and sponsors helped lessen some of the costs. So far 15,000 of the 100,000 maps have been distributed mostly to visitor centres and many to secondary schools science departments. The map is receiving very favourable comments both from geoscientists and tourism information services. Accompanying website: http://bit.ly/XUsS9m

There are several areas which relate to our Northern Rivers:

• Mid North Coast
• New England
• Northern Rivers

I hope you find something for your area or something you’d like to look at while travelling through.

An excellent outcome from atmospheric atomic bomb testing

Human ingenuity surprises me again and again, especially the efficiency in which we can annihilate each other. During the 1940’s and 1950’s the superpowers were focused on increasing the efficiency in the way they could destroy everyone on the planet. It was a very worthy goal (yes that was a joke) and to achieve maximum efficiency they needed to conduct atmospheric tests of their bombs. Sometimes, unforeseen obvious benefits other than the benefits of death and destruction of humanity can arise.

I have recently been thinking about groundwater in the Richmond River area for which I have been consulting sections of a PhD thesis written by Leonard Drury in 1982 (Drury 1982). Drury's comprehensive thesis included qualitative identification on the age of groundwater in aquifers in the Richmond River by using an unstable isotope of hydrogen called tritium. Hydrogen is an atomic component of water (the H in H2O) but hydrogen actually comes in three natural forms based on the number of neutrons are in the nucleus of the hydrogen atom. These different forms are called isotopes. Hydrogen naturally has one neutron or less commonly two neutrons (called deuterium) and very rarely three neutrons (called tritium). In nuclear explosions the third isotope tritium, is created at concentrations much higher than the background. The reason why tritium is rare naturally is that it is only formed in the upper atmosphere but is unstable and loses the extra neutrons to become a smaller isotope over a period of time.

Half of the tritium in a given amount of water (or whatever) decays over a period of 12.5 years (this is called a half-life). Which means that over 25 years there is only a quarter of the original tritium left, 37.5 years one eighth, 50 years one sixteenth etc. Since tritium is not naturally occurring there is no practical use to measure for tritium unless you can introduce it into a system as a tracer and then measure its behaviour. This means that a large ‘slug’ of tritium was created during the 1940’s and 1950’s during atmospheric nuclear testing. Therefore if you can look for tritium in groundwater and if it is not present you can assume that that groundwater has been in existence for more than 50 years, i.e. it was present in the ground before any nuclear tests. If you detect tritium in several locations in an aquifer the relative abundance of the tritium will give an indication of the age of the water and whether mixing is occurring between old groundwater and new groundwater. It won’t give you an exact date but it will let you know a lot about behaviour of an aquifer.

The trouble is time is running out. The half-life of tritium means that as time goes on the ability for us to accurately measure the smaller amount of the isotope means that one day we won’t be able to use this as a technique. I was aware that time was running out on using tritium as an effective groundwater tracer but I was not aware how soon. I have had a few chats with an academic at Southern Cross University one of which was about using tritium, he said we actually only have about 5 or 10 years left to which I jokingly suggested to him that we should reset the tritium clock with some more atmospheric nuclear explosions! To which he informed me that actually there appears to be some more tracers that can be used following the Fukushima Nuclear Accident.

Bibliography/References:

*Drury, L.W. 1982. Hydrogeology and Quaternary Stratigraphy of the Richmond River Valley, New South Wales. University of New South Wales, PhD thesis.
*Moran, J.E. & Hudson, G.B. 2005. Using Groundwater Age and Other Isotopic Signatures to Delineate Groundwater Flow and Stratification. University of Illinois.
*U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), 2004, Stable Isotopes and Radiochemicals, in National Field Manual for the Collection of Water-Quality Data, Chapter A5 Processing of Water Samples. USGS Techniques of Water-Resources Investigation

More climate clues on the Northern Tablelands

In January last year I did a post called How Cold Was It? Glaciers in New England? that showed evidence of peri-glacial features in the Northern Tablelands of New England, specifically in the area just to the east of Guyra. Bob H, gave me a tip-off for these interesting features which went unnoticed for a long time – including by me. I’d even taken a photograph of a solifluction lobe and not identified its true nature! It is important to know that Solifluction lobes and other peri-glacial features such as cirques are not glacial features per se. However, Bob did mention a probable moraine elsewhere in the New England, specifically, near Ebor in the vicinity of Duttons Trout Hatchery. A moraine IS a glacial feature. Because of these interesting features and because that part of the country is wonderfully beautiful I have wanted to do a road trip into the area but as yet have not been able to. The best I’ve been able to do is look at Google Maps but at least even consulting Google you can find some little gems.

A Google Earth image of the area to the North of Wollomombi

While looking at Google Maps I recognised more evidence of peri-glacial features in the Wollomombi area, which is about 20km to the south east of where the above-mentioned features were identified near Guyra. Here too was evidence of solifluction (movement of soil due to the partial thawing of summer permafrost). I’ve not been able to identify with certainty any other evidence of solifluction or related features even in the higher (and therefore colder) parts such as Ebor. Maybe, it was the case that during the last glacial maximum (about ten to twelve thousand years ago) only isolated areas formed permafrost - seemingly small areas of south facing hills.

However, when noticing the places where periglacial features are present such as east of Guyra at Malpas Dam and those I just noticed north of Wollomombi, I thought that they seemed only to be present on hills that looked like they had soils derived from basalt rock. Indeed, upon inspection of the geological maps it became apparent that the only places where I can see these peri-glacial features are mapped as being on Cenozoic aged basalts. The map shows the south facing hills that are derived from other rock types such as granites and meta-sediments do not show the same evidence of being affected by permafrost or related processes. This is interesting because there are two possible reasons for this:

1. There was only isolated areas that were cold enough to maintain permafrost during the last glacial maximum; or
2. The soils derived from granites and meta-sediments did not preserve evidence of permafrost

Given that the solifluction lobes evident at both Wollomombi and Guyra are about 20km from each other I would suggest that it is unlikely that the effects would only occur in these two areas and not in the area in between, so option 2 is the most likely. This may have the following implications:

• Zones of permafrost (peri-glacial environments) and maybe small glacial environments probably existed in frequent patches on south facing slopes all the way between Guyra and Wollomombi and maybe even further to Ebor an area 60km long;
• The soils in this area are derived from three major types consisting of Carboniferous aged Meta-sediments of the Girrakool Beds and Sandon Beds, Permian and Triassic aged New England Batholith ‘granites’ of the Abroi Granodiorite Rockvale Monzogranite and Round Mountain Leucomonzogranite and finally Cenozoic aged ‘basalts’ including the Doughboy Volcanics and others which are unnamed;
• Only the soils derived from the basalts have properties available to behave in a manner which produces and or preserve the evidence of permafrost in features such as cirques and solifluction lobes.

A Google Earth image of a spot next to Malpas Dam near Guyra.
Here the solifluction lobes are comparatively big

So, what does this mean? Well, it means that it was very cold over a large area in the New England. So much, that during the last glacial maximum, water was permanently frozen in the soil in south facing topographic areas over a widespread region extending at least from Guyra to Ebor. But, evidence for this was only preserved in the soils derived from basalts (I need to consult a pedologist (soil scientist) to figure out exactly why this might be the case).

So, if you are shivering and experiencing snow flurries in the area during winter, know that you would have been shivering harder had you been there about 12 000 years ago. It makes me wonder if the indigenous people of the region experienced that cold or whether the land was too cold and marginal for them to live there at that time.