Teachers Guide
West Head Geotrail
Diversity in a single rock unit
The geology map shows the entire area as green – Hawkesbury Sandstone, but the map legend says there is more than just sandstone in that named unit. What other rock types can you identify and how do they relate to one another? Hint, don’t forget the role of humans in moving rocks around.
Patchy distribution of organisms
The diversity of vegetation on the peninsula is extraordinary for a landscape that seems to be so simple and all based on sandstone. What are the different patches, how do they relate to their location and what environmental factors seem to be directing the differences? Are there comparable patterns in animal distribution?
Aboriginal significance
There are over 1,400 known Aboriginal sites in the GeoRegion. Describe a range of examples and explain why you think they were important in Aboriginal times? Have those values changed and how should we see them today?
Aboriginal rock engravings are well represented on the Lambert Peninsula. Can you determine how they were made? One suggestion is that human figures were traced around a person’s shadow – would this work in any example that you have seen? Can you think of a better way?
Are the cupules at Geosite 1 of human origin? What evidence would you seek to demonstrate your answer?
Speculate on the significance of the engraving sites. Why don’t we know what they all mean?
Processes of soil formation
Pretend to be a grain of sand locked in the sandstone for 240 million years since you were dumped in the bed of big river flowing from Antarctica. You are now exposed in a rock outcrop and right in the path of a grazing leopard slug – what future paths might be open to you?
Surface hydrology
How much of the plateau surface is bare rock and how is this important in terms of surface water flow, groundwater, soil formation, nutrient distribution, and vegetation patterns?
The role of fire
How do you think the fire regime might have changed from the colder and drier conditions of 20,000 years ago, through more recent Aboriginal times, and in the last 200 years? What sort of fire regime should we be trying to establish in Ku-ring-gai Chase and what are the most important management objectives today?