Ooh, wow, these rocks are really cool! I'm not a geologist but I find it really interesting to notice how the type of rocks in an area have such big effects on the landscape and the ecology - for example, limestone ridges have a very different shape and ecosystem to granite-based hills, and you can really see how different a coastline made up of sedimentary rock like limestone looks and behaves from a coastline made up of igneous or metamorphous rock - limestone makes the coast all pitted and rough with cliffs and overhangs and weird little coves, whereas with harder, volcanic rock you get smoother curves with headlands jutting out and massive boulders and curving slopes of rock slowly shaped by the sea.
A few cool places with rocks that I've been to:
- Parts of central and northern Vietnam where these tree-covered hills and spires of marble rock jut almost vertically out of the landscape, everything is jagged with all these steep cliffs and sharp valleys and it looks really, really cool.
- The gorges in Karijini national park, Western Australia - all hills and plains of red dirt and spinifex grass right up until the places where it looks like the ground has cracked open. The gorges aren't super massive, not like the grand canyon or anything, but they're pretty impressive - the rock's all striped in different layers, there are waterfalls and pools and all the plants are different with heaps of ferns and trees and plants that need far more coolness and water than you can get up on the surface.
- This one spot on the Murray River near Dwellingup (also in Western Australia) where there's rapids down and through all these granite rocks and the churning water's scooped out smooth, round bowls in the rock - have you ever seen a meteorite, one of the metal ones? It's like that, all pitted but smooth, but on a larger scale. And also with a river. In some places the river's carved out paths under and through the rock, it's really cool.
