Geological Field Excursion
Last
Saturday we went on a Geological Field Excursion by CMI, with about 50 other
people. Part of a home-schooling family who are friends of ours came too. The
weather was lovely, though it was a bit cool down at the beach, and it rained a
few drops at times.
We
started the day early, because we had to get to the place in Newcastle we were
to meet at by 8:30. So I drove through the early morning mist. At the top of
one hill the town before us was a lake of mist full of floating tree tops and
all amongst the mist were lights like fallen stars. It was beautiful. Later the
sun appeared over a hill and through the mist it looked like melted gold. The
sun made the mist a golden colour and when I drove past some pine trees they
seemed to have black rays shining from them, at least in comparison to the gold
all around, in the magic morning.
After
everyone had arrived, signed off and got name tags, we climbed onto the coach.
The coach rumbled and moved forwards then stopped. It started again, went
backwards and forwards further up the slope and then stopped. We were hoping
that there were no cars too close behind us. Then it went backwards a lot and
then forwards, then stopped. We found out later that the bus driver had never
driven this particular bus before. We
slowly, very slowly, crept jittering and shuddering up towards the top of the
hill. A passenger went down the front who must have been a bus driver and gave
the driver some tips. We were nearly at the top and were going without stopping
and then there were some red traffic lights, we stopped and then when they
turned green we started then stopped and then finally got over that hill.
(There were more hills to come, but they weren’t quite so bad.)
The
first stop was at a beach and we were meant to be looking at the rocks of the
cliff faces, but I couldn’t resist gazing at the foaming waves as they rolled
in endlessly from the ocean. Do waves ever get tired? I think the colour of the
waves as they crash over is so lovely. I could see boats and a rainbow far out
on the horizon.
There
was a ‘dyke’ in the rocks, which is where once a volcano shot lava out of but
then a great amount of water eroded the top of the ‘volcano’ away along with
other parts of the land. Then there was a fault where the layers to one side of the dyke had dropped heaps.
The guide was explaining how so many scientists refused even to consider the
use of a “catastrophe” like a flood to
explain things but use millions of years instead, and a catastrophe makes more
sense but they don’t want to admit there was a worldwide flood like the Bible
says, but most of all don’t want to admit, there is a God.
We
looked at rock layers and our guide said how the red ones had iron in them and
the black had lots of organic material. He talked about how coal forms under
high pressure and heat from big deposits of organic material. Evolutionists
have a lot of trouble explaining how so much organic material was put in these
conditions to make all the coal that is being mined in Australia and other
places. A worldwide flood makes it easy to explain. He also said how black coal
is made under really hot temperatures but brown coal does not need it to be
quite so hot.
When
we got back on the coach it didn’t disappoint us and stopped again! Another
time when the coach was coming out of the part off the road it had stopped in
and trying to turn around, we managed to gather a large amount of cars trying
to get past us but they couldn’t. My friend and her dad were the last getting
back one time and everyone on the coach watched as they came across the road
and her hat blew off and she had to go chasing it.
We
went and looked at a really old church and I patted some horses that were in
the paddock next door, and wondered if the electric fence was on. Is it better
to maybe get a zap or to never know? I finally decided the possibility of
getting zapped was better than never knowing. Neither of my friends or my
sister would touch it because they thought the danger of being zapped was too
great and anyway I would do it if they didn’t. I tried with a bit of green
grass first, which is meant (if the fence is on) to zap you only a tiny bit and
in the past it has worked, and I felt nothing. So I did touch it (eventually)
and found out that all the strands were turned off. My curiosity (and some
other peoples) was satisfied, but luckily they did not get the satisfaction of watching
me get zapped!
We
looked at more different sorts of rocks, and a lady from the town we were at
(Seaham) told everyone on the bus about how the rocks were millions of years
old and formed by glaciers. Just before that our guide had explained that they
were very probably not formed by glaciers. Also since the world is only around
6000 years old, things can’t be millions of years old, God had not even created
time that long ago! I wondered what that lady would have thought if she knew
that probably, nearly everyone on that bus disagreed with her.
We
had lunch at a ‘small’ shopping centre and I thought if that was a small one
how big would a big one have been. Greenhills shopping centre in east Maitland
is not my idea of a small shopping centre! It nearly killed me walking around
in there.
After
lunch we went to an old quarry and I finally completed the task of finding a
rock with no trace of a fossil on it! The fossils were of shells and sea plants
and shells and shells. After being there shell fossils will never feel so
special again! Nearly everyone took a few home, but my friends dad probably had
the most, he filled the other half of his back pack with large rocks, full of
fossils and later one of the bags straps was starting to break.
We
had been going to go to another place but we spent so long at the quarry we ran
out of time and drove back to the starting point and all drove back to our own
homes. The most interesting thing that
happened while we were driving home was the first. I was going to have to turn
left and go a long way and around a roundabout just to get back to where I was,
but on the other side of the road. But there was a break so we thought we would
wait for the next and then go across the two lanes of traffic (that wouldn’t be
there at the time) and turn right. So we waited. The break came. I went and
when I was about to turn right, a car appeared to my left but I knew I had to
go because there were now cars coming on my right too. So I accelerated and
went into the third lane on that side. Luckily the person saw me and slowed
down. So it was all ok and we got safely home. It was a pretty fun day.
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1 comments
Wow!
ReplyDeleteSounds pretty interesting!
Rosie