Went for a bit of a walk along the beach this arvo. Started at Coogee beach and headed south:
We certainly have some interesting coastline here in Australia. Amazing to think at one stage, at the time of the dinosaurs I'd have been completely submerged. Standing today on top of Sydney's sandstone, which are fluvial deposits from an ancient riverbed delta.
More recently the coastline extended way further out, another '12 km east', as the water got locked up in ice in the last ice age (115000 – 11700 years ago [1]). The water started to rise again roughly 12000 years ago at the end of this ice age with the coastline finally rising up to todays level about 6000 years ago.
Here is some of the sedimentary rock with some interesting weathering patterns:
Looking north back towards Coogee:
Walked past a peat bog (South Coogee wetlands), which had formed over the past thousand years or so inside basically an enclave in the rocky cliff, eating into the sandstone before reaching the bedrock.
They have taken samples, looked at the layers and found more charcoal from pre-european times (indicating more controlled burns) and more dust in the sediment dated after, due to erosion:
Looking south now from Trenerry reserve, it had been raining so lots of water around:
This drain headed out to sea, over the Ivor Rowe rockpool, as you can see plenty of plastic debris around too (I counted at least 3 large pieces):
There was a larger drain nearby, though it had a much less volume of water coming out:
At the end of the track (though it probably continues further) a lot of water was flowing off the road (Bunda parade) into an exit drain here:
I'm not sure where the water goes after then. Looking closer debris could be seen in and around sediment deposit:
Most of the water seemed to be coming out of this drainage outlet:
And nearby worksite had decent amount of runoff too:
Not sure what this plant was but the berries looked great:
Thanks for reading!