Geologists Dr Nancy Vickery and Bob Brown have documented some self-guided tours for the rock-lovers among us. With phone in hand, we set out to follow their tour of Red Rock headland.
This trail should be done at low tide. Be careful at the cliff edges. Wear sturdy shoes.
You may want to download the GPX to your favourite phone trail app (we use GaiaGPS) and printout their information brochure. Begin at the track to the beach after walking through the caravan park.
There are stops on this tour which highlight different rocks and land forms. We’ve included a short summary Nancy and Bob’s geological information for each stop, together with some photos we took. If this all sounds too much like a school excursion, don’t worry, there is no homework! Its fun for adults and kids, everyone likes coloured rocks.
The rocks at the headland are called Redbank River beds. They are an enigma to geologists and strongly deformed, resembling sausages of minced meat. They are seriously old – before the time of dinosaurs even, forming about the time the first amphibians were crawling along the sea floor.
The ten stops on this tour (click on the number on the map for a photo and more information)
- Folded sedimentary rocks, fault planes, microveins
- Coastal landforms and processes (rock stack, dunes)
- Recumbent folds, major fault, differential erosion
- Folded cherts, microvein networks
- Mass flow sandstone, oozes, mudstone
- Jasper, manganese oxide, effloresence
- Mass flow pebbly jasper and breccia
- Mass flow pebbly jasper, manganese oxide
- Elevated sand dunes
- Beachrock (and no, beachrock isn’t any old rock you find on a beach, its a specific type of rock)
Nancy and Bob have other tours that we hope to explore, including Brooms Head, Diamond Head, Point Lookout and Cathedral Rock.
While at Red Rock, we also recommend walking the short Red Rock river loop for a different environment of mudflats and mangroves! The Yuragyir Coastal Walk ends just across the river, and the Solitary Islands Coastal Walk begins here.
