Google Maps: taking away the ability of crazy Tasmanian surfers to hide the great south-western waves. < not sarcasm > Your secret's out, dudes.

Cruising Tasmania's south-western provinces via Google Maps and finding so much to be sarcastic about, that I needed to write about it.  ;-)

Tasmania: a place where we have an awesome island name, Maatsuyker. Then, nearby we have "flat witch island", "flat top island", "round top island" and two "De Witt" islands.  Very imaginative.

I wonder when it will be time to rename "New River Lagoon" to "The River that Used to be New is Now Old" Lagoon.

"Cox Bight"?  I most certainly hope not.  If they really do, I'm becoming a lesbian.

Hmm, if there's a West Pyramid... where is the East Pyramid?  And don't they hang around in three's?

Some of these places don't have names that /clearly/ need names more than the other places.  How about we call that place "bunch of boulders cove"?  -43.61259,146.695461

And what the frak is up with all the Bays around Hobart?  How many bays do we need?  There's a bay for every bloody curvy beach.  Yes, I know I sound like an imbecile. ;-)

Wow.  There's a hen island.  Is that where a bunch of Amazonian native hens live, raising their daughters and setting their sons into the wilds of southern Tas, only venturing off the island to trick a male turbo chook into impregnating them, then 12 years later sending a very disturbing letter about their daughter being kidnapped on the island by other women who are going to kill her, only for the male turbo chook to come to the island and be burned in a big wicker turbo chook with other wild animals named after farm animals?  Oh, wait....

There is a place called... Catamaran... erm.  It's a camping site.  Erm...

Oooh, I think I just found some old lava flows :-)  Looks a bit pillow-lava-ie.

Black Island... oh, yes, it does look black.  Looks like a basaltic lava flow.

And... from there north until Macquarie Harbour, no names at all.  BUT, Google Maps becomes the clearest I  have ever seen it.  You can zoom right in on a tree.  You can't even get within 1km of Hobart from the air... yet here, in the middle of nowhere, you've got the option of putting on some 3D goggles and seeing the battered western coast and its trees and the waves in super close-up????  What.
I am not even kidding.  -42.788405,145.410536 is super-blurry with other areas indicating Google Maps cannot zoom, and just above it is the line of awesome clarity: -42.788189,145.410359
I can tell which way the lava flowed, the exact direction of individual waves, and how high the landscape is.  I can even tell what time of the day it is by the shadows cast over hill-sides.
Aside from all the trees, it is a bleak desolate looking shoreline once you get past the sandy beaches of the south-west, and move up the western edge of Tasmania, with its sharp basaltic flows, vicious foamy wash, lack of beaches and high clifftops.

I would have to say that western-Tasmania has not been above the sea for very long, geologically speaking.  The volcanic flows I see seem to have occurred beneath the waves.  The differentiation between the sandstone, flatter, eastern side of the State and the rocky, sharp, heavily forested western side is age.  Basalt is more difficult to weather than sandstone, but sandstone is not a basement rock like basalt is - basalt is an oceanic crustal rock, and basement rock to the granitic cratons forming the continents.  Then, beaches begin to appear again, and as such, Google Maps becomes fuzzy and unviewable for my purposes.  -42.633927,145.333049  Then, the basalt gives way to sandstone, and lush untouched forest becomes sparser, dryer.  Smatterings of lonely properties of civilisation, then once again basaltic cliffs, no beaches and rough tides.  Then, hello Strahan, we have civilisation once more.

What a ride.


I cruise Google Maps (not Earth... don't like that. Never as up-to-date, I find) not for people-watching, but for geomorphological reasons.  I'm fascinated to learn the "lay of the land" of places I've never ventured, and the names we call them.  I recently went across the US states - but not for geological reasons.  I just wanted to know where things were.  And learned there are a couple of Las Vegas' within 500km of one another, and both have airports nearby.  Awkward if you forget which State the plastic Las Vegas is in, when you board a plane.  ;-)

 

 

Labels: basalt, bays, beaches, craton, forests, Google Maps, granite, islands, lava flow, sandstone, south, south-west, surfers, Tasmania, trees, west coast

what are your thoughts? 0 Comments

posted by Da at 2:05:00 AM