The volcano of the Border Ranges - Focal Peak

I was going to do a blog on the Focal Peak Volcano and the Cenozoic aged volcanic rocks associated with it in the Northern Rivers/New England NSW but to get an understanding of these rocks on the southern side of the dotted line you really have to know a bit, or a lot about the geology across the border. With that in mind I was going to write this blog but then I remembered that the wonderful Queensland branch of the Geological Society of Australia have some excellent information sheets on Mount Barney and Mount Barlow that would do just the trick. So instead of starting from scratch I thought I'd just link directly to the PDF. Here it is.

The authors of this information sheet are Neville Stevens and Warwick Willmott who in my view are/were some of the best science educators in the country and happen to be geologists! I have enjoyed some of their presentations (and many others) at the Theodore Club in Brisbane when I lived there and it is one of the things I do miss about living away from that city. Alas, Neville passed away earlier this year.

While I'm talking about Queensland I should recommend a couple of books which gives an excellent account of the geology of Southern Queensland these are Rocks and Landscapes of the National Parks of Southern Queensland by Warwick Willmott and Rocks and Lanscapes of the Gold Coast Hinterland by the same author. I understand this Gold Coast one has just been revised and expanded. You can get a copy of the Southern Queensland one for less than $25 and the Gold Coast one for less than $15 including postage from the Queensland Division of the Geological Society of Australia. For details on ordering these books click here.