ABSTRACT
The whole of the Australian continent is on a plate centre, for its tensional or ridge margin lies far to the south in the Southern Ocean and its compressive margin a long way to the north and east in New Guinea and New Zealand. Being a continental plate centre the bedrock of Australia is for the most part granite or granite-derived, its topography is gentle and in the more recent past volcanism and seismic activity have been minimal. This chapter attempts to show that the greater part of the soils of the Australian continent are explicable in terms of their derivation from a granitic bedrock, which has been affected by epimorphism and near-surface processes, under conditions of minimal topographic variation to give rise to a texture-contrast soil with either a thin or a thick topsoil. To establish similarities between Australia and other continents it is sufficient, therefore, to demonstrate that the granitic strand of pedogenesis can be recognized.
