A short history of Australian geophysics

Abstract

Australia is the flattest and driest (apart from Antarctica) continent with large areas of semi-desert in the interior. A large proportion of the country is made up of the Western Shield (Yilgarn and Pilbara Blocks, Fig. 1) and platform which contrasts geologically and geophysically with the eastern Phanerozoic region (Finlayson, 1982). Being well within the Australia-India plate the continent does not have a high seismicity and volcanism is dead. It is comparatively near the south magnetic pole, is surrounded partly by extremely active island arcs, and has undergone large northward movement in the last 95 million years (Veevers, J. J., 1988).