Geology around town: Flinders St Station, Victoria, Australia

 

Flinders Street Station, with an iconic Melbourne tram.

During a recent trip to the city of Melbourne I spent some time admiring the granites at Flinders Street Station. The granites most likely originate from the Harcourt Granite, located near Castlemaine, Victoria. They are a lovely creamy colour, course grained and feature a number of xenoliths and enclaves.

 

A xenolith, hornfels (with remnant bedding?)

 

An enclave featuring large K-feldspars located under the ticker sellers window.

 

Under the clocks to the right this xenolith is halfway up a pillar.

Countertop geology: sheared granite

Today's countertop geology was brought to you by friends in Queensland. They have the most lovely granite table on their verandah and the fed me delicious Canadian breakfast foods while I took these photos.

This granite has been sheared and the phenocrysts are surrounded by almost sigma-shaped matrix. The picture below shows a grain that is probably at right angles to shear direction and as such hasn't rotated like some of the others.