Eaglehawk Neck - Places to See

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This was published 15 years ago

Eaglehawk Neck - Places to See

The Tessellated Pavement
A short walk from the car park leads down to the remarkable tessellated pavement. This unusual geological formation, which gives the rocks the effect of being rather neatly tiled by a giant, is explained on a placard near the site.

'It is called the tessellated pavement. The pavement appears tessellated (it's tiled) because the rocks forming it were fractured by earth movements. The fractures are in three sets, one set runs almost north, another east north east, and a third discontinuous set north north west. These last two sets produce the tiled appearance. The flatness of the pavement is due to initial erosion by waves carrying sand and gravel and nearer to the cliff, to chemical action by sea water. The rocks which absorb sea water during high tide dry out during low tide causing salt crystals to grow and disintegrate the rocks - a process which produces shallow basins'. The placard notes that the information has been provided by the Geology Department of the University of Tasmania.

Doo Town
Beyond Eaglehawk Neck, on the way out to Tasman's Arch, the Blowhole and the Devil's Kitchen is the holiday village of Doo Town where all the residents have tried to be witty with the naming of their homes. There is a Gunadoo, Doodle Doo, Love Me Doo, Doo Us, Doo Me, Doo Nix, Wee Doo, Xanadu, Rum Doo and, the house which reputedly started the fashion, Doo Little. - a suitable name for a holiday home.

The natural features on the coast are a truly remarkable.

Tasman's Arch
Tasman's Arch is a natural arch which is really a greatly enlarged tunnel running from the coast along a zone of closely spaced cracks and extending inland to a second zone perpendicular to the first. The roof at the landward end of the tunnel has collapsed but the hole is too large and the sides are too high to form a blowhole. The tunnel was produced by wave action.

Devil's Kitchen
The 60 metres deep Devil's Kitchen has been formed by a similar process to that which has created Tasman's Arch. Basically, if Tasman's Arch collapsed, it would lead to the creation of a landform like the Devils Kitchen.

The rocks in which the Blowhole, Tasman's Arch and the Devils Kitchen occur are permian in age (about 250 million years old) and were deposited as silt and sand on the floor of a shallow sea. It is probably that ice floated on the surface. Most of the pebbles from the ice were dropped as it melted.

For more information on Eaglehawk Neck check out: http://www.eaglehawkneck.com/index.htm

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