The reason why the world's oldest rocks
are found in Australia is that Australia is geologically a very stable
continent.
Mountains are normally built on continental plate
boundaries, either when two plates collide (e.g. Himalayas), or when
volcanoes erupt (e.g. Iceland and New Zealand).
Poster by AllPosters. Click on
thumbnail to buy
But Australia
is away from plate boundaries, so there has been no new mountain
building in Australia for a long time. (The last one in eastern
Australia was the uplift of the Great Dividing Range for 80 million
years ago while in the rest of Australia it has been even longer).
Poster by AllPosters. Click on thumbnail to buy
This stability has given erosion a lot of time to work on Australian
landscape, which is consequently very flat compared to all other
continents in the world.
Note:
This site uses
British English, which is the English we use in Australia. You will
find words like "traveller", "harbour" and "realise", and they are all
correct in the language used in Australia.
Disclaimer: Although
best efforts have been made to ensure
that all the information on this site is correct,
gondwananet.com is not to be blamed should there be a mistake.
Copyright notice:
All contents of this website are strictly protected
by the Law of Copyright. What
does that mean?