Field guide to Granite Bay, Noosa Heads [SGTSG Field Guide No. 19]

General Context Noosa National Park has had a long history of field teaching, being used for undergraduate teaching in the late 1950’s and 1960’s at The University of Queensland (e.g., Houston, 1959; Kretz, 1966). Most recently, it has been re - utilized for second year petrology and introductory mapping at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) , and is in combination with headlands to the south at Coolum and Pt Arkwright that represent field trip destinations for other first and second year subjects at QUT. The Noosa National Park preserves exposures of the latest Triassic - Middle Jurassic Nambour Basin, a component of the Mesozoic Great Australian Superbasin (Fig. 2 ; o r Great Artesian Basin; Cook et al., 2013). The Great Australian Superbasin developed following termination of the Hunter Bowen Orogeny in eastern Australia ~ 230 Ma (e.g., Holcombe et al., 1997). The expanse of this Superbasin, covering much of onshore Queensland, and extending into northern New South Wales, South Australia, the Northern Territory, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia ( covering up to ~25% of the Australian continent) reflects widespread stabilisation of the eastern and northern Australian margins . However, a distinguishing feature of the Great Australian Superbasin is the significant volume of brief episodes of contemporary volcaniclastic sedimentation preserved across the entire superbasin (Cook et al., 2013). Contemporary, but largely extrabasinal volcanism occurred in two pulses: the first in the Middle Jurassic ( Bathonian - Oxfordian, ~160 Ma) and Early Cretaceous (~135 - 90 Ma; e.g . , Ewart et al., 1992; Bryan et al., 1997; 2012). Both igneous pulses have been related to rifting events along the eastern margin of the basin , and the Middle Jurassic event also coincide d with Large Igneous Province magmatism and rifting along the NW Australian margin. Early - mid Cretaceous magmatism in Eastern Australia is related to the break - up of Eastern Gondwana a s recorded by the Whitsunday Silicic Large Igneous Province.