Phillip Island is a 90-minute drive from Melbourne. The entrance to Phillip Island is at San Remo where a high span bridge connects the island to the mainland. Over the bridge is a turn off to Cape Woolamai. Cape Woolamai is a granite batholith protruding into Bass Strait and is a designated national park. Steep cliffs surround the cape and there are well marked walking tracks throughout the park. Pegmatite veins and large crystals of feldspar and quartz are known to occur in the granite cliffs.
Further along at Kitty Miller Bay, cliffs of volcanic basalt flows crop out along the shoreline. Sometimes, small rounded translucent agate nodules can be found in the cliff faces. Walking around the point to the wreck, abundant zeolite and calcite crystals are evident in the basalt platforms, filling vesicles and fractures in the basalt flows. The remainder of Phillip Island largely consists of a mixture of marine sediments and basalt flows.
Leaving Phillip Island and travelling along the Wonthaggi road, we enter the flanks of the rich oil and gas producing Gippsland Basin. Around Wonthaggi, fluvial and deltaic sediments of the Cretaceous Strzelecki Group contain deposits of black coal. The coal seams were the site of several state coalmines during the 1930’s. Samples of coal, sandstone, conglomerate, siltstone and mudstone can be picked off the old mine dumps. The shore platforms between Wonthaggi and Inverloch contain Cretaceous fossil remains and Monash University conducts regular digs here in the hope of finding dinosaur bones.
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Chalcedony Nodule from Kitty Miller Bay
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Zeolite
