After scouring Moruya Markets looking unsuccessfully for rhubarb crowns, we head down the coast to Bingie Bingie Point, perhaps the most notable of the local geological sites. We walk out onto a promontory with spectacular views north towards Didthul (called Pigeon House by Captain Cook) and south towards Gulaga. The rocks are vivid with lichen, but today we are after more than aesthetics.
Let's see how I go with recognition and explanation today, helped out by J and the same website that gave us chevron-recognition last week. We are hunting first of all for dikes, two different kinds and colours. They are described as “discordant features” which gives me hope. I'm looking for something distinctive: a false lead in a way. I later discover that “discordant features” is a technical term, not a description. The sheer multitude of rocks is daunting and I wonder whether I'll walk on by without actually encountering. But my scramble-route leads me to unmistakable dikes, rock running in a panel, intruded into older rock, rock formed when magma cooled and solidified. Even in the world of rocks, it seems, younger shoulders older out of the way. One dike is blonde (aplite), the other black (porphyritic basalt.) If I begin to think I have seen a dike of substance, I need to think again: the Great Dike of Zimbabwe is 600 km long and 10 km wide.
So I've found and identified the dikes. However, there are other things to find before I can simply, and far more easily, admire beauty. Find the junction between tonalite (lighter grey) and gabbro (darker grey) I must, because it's “geologically outstanding” to see two different igneous rock types in such a small area. Here, I'm not so sure about my ID, but if I'm wrong we're left with a beautiful view, and that's not to be sniffed at!
Tonalite to the left: gabbro to the right
Moving away from the hard labour of new knowledge, I indulge in a little bit of purely aesthetic photography capturing the rich colours and patterns of the orange and yellow-green lichens that make the rocks at Bingie so immediately and superficially spectacular.
The end point of our Bingie ramble are the remains of the SS Monaro wrecked en route from Sydney to Merimbula in May 1879. It came to grief on a reef on a dark rainy night: all the passengers were saved and warmed by blankets sent from Moruya. However there was no hope of recovering the steamer, and the remains (two boilers and a steam post) are rusting in decaying splendour more than a century later.
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snippetsandsnaps 
Hi there,
I’m on the end run of putting together a FOC travelling exhibition for small volunteer museums on the south coast of NSW about the Illawarra and South Coast Steam Navigation Company. I’ve come across your fabulous blog and the images of relics from the wreck of the Monaro that, with your permission, I’d love to be able to use.
Cheers and thanks,
Angela
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You’re welcome, and I’m honoured! Could you keep me posted?
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Thanks so much. Would it be possible to email me a couple of the pics (downloading them online loses quote a lot of resolution); and also your name / details so I can include the appropriate acknowledgement.
Cheers, and thanks again,
Angela
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The blog is my storage place for photos. I don’t actually keep them in any other form. Sorry. If you can still use them, my name is Meg Davis. Probably no other details of interest!
Regards, Meg
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Well, problem solved! I’m just naturally slow on the uptake because I hadn’t twigged what ‘holibobs’ were on Gillys, and coming here to find you looking for rhubarb crowns… to grace which king or queen, I wondered? Maybe I’m finally mastering language. No, probably not 🙂
None of which is relevant because you have put together the most beautiful post, Meg. From admiring your seal (or was it walrus?) shaped ochre rocks, I went on to be astounded by the geology. I love the kind of crevices where rock tones collide. I found a few on the Alentejo. And that’s serious longevity in an exposed wreck.
What a world! First Jo Bryant and her unicorn and now this. Thanks darlin’. 🙂
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Would you rather add this one to Monday walk than the snake?? I’ll let you off expanding your species reach, since you a so appreciative of this post. I know we share an aesthetic liking for rocks, and I love your Portugal beaches, and your English ones too.
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Mind reader! I had already decided to use this one instead. I was sure you wouldn’t notice. 🙂 🙂
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Wimp!
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Harsh! 😦
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Why ambivalent about Poland? Me too!
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It’s complicated, Meg! It’s so natural for my Dad to be there, but not at all for me. I love to chat and find out about people and I so can’t do that in Poland. I know I should have made greater efforts with the language but… And in some respects it’s worse when Mick comes with me because he expects me to know what’s going on and half the time I don’t. But it will be a lovely wedding. They are lovely people and very kind to us.
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Oh, I so understand this. It is exactly how I feel. Without language you can’t be who you are and you can’t see who other people are. I also hate being dependent. And yet I’m planning eight months there! Enjoy what you can and make good use of the bedroom retreat. Empathetic hugs, m’dear.
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Bless you, Meg, for just being there. I will! 🙂
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And can I just ask if you’ve emailed Paula? She’s still not about and I hesitate to contact her again.
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No. I don’t know whether I have quite that connection with her.
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I have in the past but I won’t be connected much in the next few days. If there’s nothing when I get back I will. Hugs, me love! 🙂 Off to the bath and a soothing read for the agitated brain.
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Your dedication to digging down into the formation of your beaches is inspiring Meg. I would have so much trouble remembering all those terms, you are amazing. And you make it into an interesting post with very informative photos.
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I’ll tell you a secret. I don’t remember – I refer to info over and over, and write things down, and double check and trash anything I don’t understand before I post the blog! I’m glad you found it interesting: I wondered whether I was inflicting my struggle to know on my blogging mates.
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I now have a a memory of a gnat, and I used to pride myself on my recall and memory. Ah well at least we have the resources at our finger tips now.
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I was comforted yesterday. Having my eyes checked and the torturer said casually “You probably won’t get Alzheimer’s.” Apparently there’s a theory that slow dilating pupils contra-indicate Alzheimer’s and mine really took their time.
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Now that is good news.
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Wow! You really get stuck into a subject don’t you? Wonderful dikes and lichens and rust and views. I was totally in awe at the rocks encountered in Namibia. Probably the first time I stopped and thought about the earth and how it had been created. I was also quite taken with the rock paintings in both Namibia and the Zimbabwe/South Africa border.
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Will you stop provoking me into one of the deadly sins! I’d love to see rock paintings and rocks in Africa. Not likely now, with my orientation to the northern hemisphere. However, I can’t complain about home.
Geology’s been hovering at the back of my mind for a long time: it helps that J is also interested. His scientific and observational eye is better than mine, and he’s done more background reading over the years.
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And you have even older Aboriginal rock paintings to go and see.
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And have seen. At Mutawintji and at Laura, and even on rocks on Berry Island in Sydney Harbour. Thanks for deflating my envy and putting it in its proper place.
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I have seen a dark channel in rocks like the one in your photo somewhere but can’ t think where. Nature never ceases to amaze, that’s for sure. Shame about the rhubarb – you could get some from my garden but its a bit too far to travel 🙂 i
I don ‘t like it and can’t see the point of growing it. The leaves are toxic and you have to use tons of sugar to make the stalks palatable!
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I don’t know that I’d recognise a dike without someone else’s confirming photos. This, like last week’s chevrons, was obvious in its context.
As for rhubarb, my son likes it, so I just cooked some up for him, bought by the stalk. Like gramma pie, it’s a nostalgic taste of my childhood.
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I know I’ve seen rocks just like that but can’t think where. Maybe it was when I went to the south coast many years ago.
As for the rhubarb, I hated it when nanna cooked it as well – it must be one of those like it or hate it foods. 🙂
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I’m so tired that I couldn’t think my way out of a cardboard box right now, so I can’t get the technical stuff at all, but I can still enjoy these photos. I find the straight lines fascinating, and the rusted remains, what will they be like in another hundred years?
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I struggle with the technical stuff at my alertest! Thank you for visiting me when you’re tired. I hope beauty was a bit of balm. Rest well out of fatigue, my good friend.
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Nearly holibobs! Thank you and yes it’s always a treat to visit you 🙂
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You, despite fatigue, have expanded my vocab. Love holibobs and see its potential to irritate my daughter as well. That’s what I like in a word – multitasking.
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