Publication Name: The Canning Basin, W.A.
Authors: Greg Smith
Date Published: December 1984
Number of Pages: 23
Reference Type: Book Section
Abstract:
The Gregory Sub-Basin and adjacent areas cover an area of some 60,000 square kilometres in the northeasternCanning Basin. Early Ordovician to Triassic sediment thickness ranges up to or in excess of 15,000 metres in the depocentres of the Gregory Sub-Basin. Three major intersecting structural trends, the Hall's
Creek Mobile Zone, the Eastern Basin Margin Fault system and the northwest-southeast trending fault systems which are the dominant feature in the Canning Basin, have influenced sedimentation and structural development at various times throughout the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic. Three major structural provinces are present in the area, from northeast to southwest, the Billiluna Shelf and adjoining Balgo Terrace, the Gregory
Sub-Basin and the Crossland Platform and adjoining Barbwire Terrace. Two major orogenic cycles have affected
the area since basin development began as an epicontinental sag in the Cambrian or Ordovician. The first, the Middle Devonian-Early Carboniferous Alice Springs Orogeny, severed links between the Canning Basin and basins to the east and caused major delta complexes to prograde into the area from uplifted areas to the east. The second, the Fitzroy Movement of Late Triassic-Early Jurassic age, was a period of right lateral convergent wrenching which predominantly affected the Gregory Sub-Basin.