12 Apostles time capsules

UNIVERSITY of Melbourne geologist Stephen Gallagher is a big fan of the 12 Apostles and has spent the last week studying them, but it is the Surf Coast he describes as the “best”.

The micropalaeontologist has spent years studying the coastline, in particular the cliffs, and is on a mission to expand people’s knowledge about how they reveal millions of years of history.

“I’ve almost walked all the coastline of Victoria, certainly from Torquay to Port Campbell,” he said.

“The Torquay coastline is essentially the best, it’s amazing.”

At least one reason for his Surf Coast passion is its age, “and its relationship to the 12 Apostles… the limestone that formed the cliffs at Torquay are actually older, but they formed in similar ways,” he said.

“There is a section in Jan Juc that are of a similar age, the Yellow bluff, they are the same age as the yellow lime stones at the base of the 12 Apostles… 14, 15 million years old. But then as you head east you are getting a profile of about 15 to 25 million years of age.

“It’s amazing, really deep time history that is revealed there.”

It is a fact he thinks many people don’t know, given the almost three million people who annually make the trek hours down the Great Ocean Road to the 12 Apostles, but he has a theory as to why that may be.

“People are usually focusing their attention on the surfers, but there’s some really nice stuff in the cliffs there,” he said, nominating the revelation of an ancient whale fossil as an example.

“There are some coastal cliffs in South Australia that are kind of the same age, but Torquay is particularly special, that you don’t find anywhere else on the south coast.”

The cliffs are essentially time capsules, and reveal much of how the world once was when it was warmer and oceans were higher, a prescient warning given the planets rapid increase in temperatures.

“The past is repeated in the future…our goal is to educate the community about the history,” Mr Gallagher said.

He and his team have a permit from Parks Victoria for their current research that allows them to take samples from around Port Campbell and the 12 Apostles, where the coastline limestones and shelly clays record the history of marine conditions from 15 to 7 million years ago.

“Whereas the Torquay coastline limestones and shelly clays offers a record of a deeper history of marine environments from 25 to around 12 million years. This is our past research and are a fantastic field teaching environment for undergraduate students”, and the public, he said.