ABSTRACT
Historically the location of brick clay pits has mirrored the growth of the Melbourne city area. Clay pipe manufacture began as an adjunct of potteries because of the hand forming skills required to fashion the stuck on socket. Pallid and brown zones from Early Tertiary weathering and plastic zones from Middle Tertiary modification of them have been used for brick and roofing tile manufacture. Conventional geological mapping would consider the raw materials of the Melbourne brick industry to be Silurian shale and siltstone, Devonian Granodiorite, Early Tertiary Older Basalt and tuff, Pliocene, Pleistocene and Recent alluvial and colluvial deposits including clays derived from the Newer Basalts. A distinctive phase of kaolinite formation during weathering produced white clays in many parts of the world during the Late Cretaceous and the early part of the Tertiary Period and such clays occur widely in Australia.
