Darling Fault

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The Darling Fault is one of the longest and most significant faults in Australia, exposed for over 1 000 km in a north–south orientation near the west coast of southern Western Australia. It is a major geological boundary separating the Archaean Yilgarn Craton in the east from the younger Pinjarra Orogen and overlying Phanerozoic Perth Basin to the west. In the Perth area, the Darling Fault is expressed as the Darling Scarp, the abrupt escarpment immediately east of the city of Perth. The actual fault lies just west of the current scarp, and a good reference point of its location is the spot that the Great Eastern Highway passes over the current Eastern Railway line in Bellevue.

The fault is very ancient and initially formed during the Precambrian Era. It has had several later phases of movement, for example during deposition of the Perth Basin, allowing up the 15 km of sediments of late Palaeozoic to Holocene age to accumulate west of the fault in the Perth Basin.

[edit] References

Myers JS (1992) Pinjarra Orogen, in Geology and Mineral Resources of Western Australia: Western Australia Geological Survey, Memoir 3, 77-119.