(Maria Island), in southern Australia, is a popular tourist attraction. Besides being set up as a national park, the island has a lot of birds, animals and marine life to attract visitors. Its other selling point is the painted scarp (Painted Cliffs). This natural colored pattern of coastal sand cliffs, like nature's paintings, embellished between the blue sea and blue sky.
Maria Island is located in the Tasman Sea (Tasman Sea), east of (Tasmania), Tasmania, about two hours by car from Horbart, the capital of Tasmania. Maria Island covers an area of only 115.5 square kilometers. To preserve the island's natural ecology, Australian authorities set the island and its surrounding waters at Mariah National Park.
The painted cliff is at the end of a beach on Mariah Island. The beautiful pattern on the sand rock is that groundwater permeates porous sand rock, leaving traces of iron oxide. These regular red, yellow and orange bands and rings are the result of layers, fractures and joints inside the sandstone.
Why does the groundwater contain iron? This may come from two major peaks on the island, where iron-rich diabase, after millions of years of wind and rain, has lost its iron elements, causing iron oxide markings to appear on painted cliffs.
In addition to the color patterns, the rocks of the painted cliffs also form a beautiful nest due to the erosion of the sea salt particles. And the action of water also gradually erodes the surface of the cliff, so that the lower part of the water has the appearance of being cut off.
Here are some of the painted cliff photos shared by netizens:
