The Atherton Tablelands

Inland of Cairns in Queensland, Australia. Home to some of the most beautiful waterfalls in the world. Millaa Millaa Falls being the most popular, and also where many adverts have been filmed, including L'oreal. The water drops 18.3 metres before plunging into a pool suitable for swimming.

Millaa Millaa Falls

Josephine Falls is well known for it's natural rock waterside.

Waterfalls are formed when a band of resistant rock lies next to less resistant rock. In this case, volcanic basalt rock. As the river flows over the rocks, the less resistant rock erodes faster, leaving resistant rock elevated above the stream below. This continues to occur  and a vertical drop is made. The erosion gradually undercuts the hard rock and eventually the resistant rock is unsupported and collapses. As the process continues, the waterfall retreats upstream. This can also cause a gorge to form. Abrasion and hydraulic action cause a plunge pool to form below the vertical drop. When the resistant rock collapses and falls into th  plunge pool, it contributes to abrasion as the loose rocks are swirled around and thrown at the sides of the pool, enlarging it further.

Whitehaven beach, Australia

Whitehaven beach is just one of many beaches in the the group of Whitsunday islands on the east coast of Australia. It is well known for it's fine, white, silica sand. The quartz-rich sand did not come from a local course as the rocks in the area do not contain large quantities of quartz. The sand drifted north along the Queensland coast, carried by prevailing sea currents and long shore drift, millions of years ago. Trapped by rocks and headbands, some sand accumulated to form the dunes of whitehaven beach. Over the years, sea levels rose and fell due to previous ice ages, causing impurities from the sand to be removed, leaving the sand fine and brilliantly white. The beach is also known as the shifting sands as each day the sand has been moved and displaced by the sea, so the beach looks different every day.

                            

     

 Whitehaven beach

Formation of the Himalyas

The Himalayan mountains are known to be young fold mountains. This is because they were formed relatively recently in earth's history compared to other mountain ranges, in a series of parallel ridges or folds extending for 2500km.

The theory behind the formation of these mountains is to do with plate tectonics and Continental Drift. On these plates lie the continents and oceans of the earth. Over 250 million years ago the continents formed a single mass called Pangea. The plates are constantly moving position due to mantle convection, gravity and the earth's rotation. This caused the land mass to gradually break apart, and then eventually collide with each other again. The Indian and Eurasian plates were squeezed together, building up pressure and stress, causing the crust to bend, fold or crumple. This created the Himalayas as the plates pushed up the rock between them. It take millions of years for mountains to be formed, and to this day the Himalayas are still rising but at a slower rate of about 5mm per year

The Himalayas

Pangaea