How Sand From Antarctica Made It To Sydney

During the Triassic Period, Australia and Antarctica were joined as part of Gondwana. Powerful braided rivers carried quartz-rich sand from highlands in East Antarctica across a vast connected landscape, through what is now Tasmania and Victoria, and into the Sydney Basin. Over millions of years, these deposits became the Hawkesbury Sandstone, the golden rock that now shapes Sydney’s cliffs, valleys, and harbor foreshores.