You will die — and it will all be over. You will die and find out everything

You will die — and it will all be over. You will die and find out everything — or cease asking.

I am so very, very busy today, so my apologies for the delay. This photo was taken at Fossil Bluff in Wynyard, one of the most important geological monuments of Tasmania.

East and west of the beach and at intervals for many kilometres to the east is a low flat gray rock known as the Wynyard Tillite, which is about 280 million years old and having been formed in the age of glaciations while Australia was part of the super continent called Gondwana. The glaciers flowed from the south towards the north and when they were melting and reached areas of depression they slowed down, and dropped the rocks they were carrying. Over time, mud covered the rocks, which became a mudstone conglomerate. You can find granites, cherts, quartz, jaspers and agates in the tillite, and on the beach as small pebbles.

Just behind where I took this photo is a sandstone Bluff, with layers of fossils encased in the stone. You can see the sandstone here. This Bluff was beneath the sea in the Oligocene geological period (about 38 million years ago), and it lies on top of the tillite. As you walk around the Bluff (at low tide) you are able to see where the sandstone and tillite meet. Some of the layers of sandstone are rich in fossils, showing the different climatic conditions that occurred during the millions of years of the Oligocene period.

Comments

smudgeon said…

And how nice is that there is a whole genus of extinct marsupial named after Wynyard? Not just a species, a whole genus.

The more respect Wynyard can get, the less it doesn't have...

18 January 2010 at 15:07

Ténèbres à la lumière... said…

Hi! Kris,
Nice post...very informative and thanks, for the link and the thought-provoking quote too.

By the way, it was nice to get a glimpse of your father too!

DeeDee ;-D

18 January 2010 at 18:42

Kris McCracken said…

Me, I miss the mini emus.

22 January 2010 at 15:20

Kris McCracken said…

DeeDee, geology is strange.

22 January 2010 at 15:20

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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