Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

Pyramid Hill

Pyramid Hill, about 225 m high, is a cone-shaped hill with a smooth pinnacle knob at the top, in the northern Pilbara Region, Western Australia. The area around Pyramid Hill was a volcanic region that was active intermittently for about 600 million years prior to about 1.8 billion years ago. It was during this active period that the vast area of basalt was deposited as lava. The rock fragments from explosive eruptions are now consolidated into rocks, agglomerates, or volcanic breccia. The tuff is the rock derived from the accumulation of volcanic ash that smothered the area affected by the eruptions. Pyramid Hill is one of the remnants of the volcanic tableland formed during the active volcanic phase

The other remnants of the tableland are flat-topped mountains and isolated spires, and even piles of boulders, mostly at the northwestern end of the Chichester Range/ Pyramid Hill is a bit further north. It is made up of alternating bands of breccia and tuff, capped by resistant black dolerite. There are no remains of any of the volcanic vents or craters that produced the volcanic landscape.

The Aboriginal inhabitants of the area believed it had great spiritual significance.

Sources & Further reading