Geological Setting and Evolution
The Perth Basin began forming in the Late Permian during the breakup of Gondwana, as the Australian continental plate began rifting away from the African and Indian continental plates.
During the Permian, what is now the Perth Basin was the eastern half of a rift valley that formed as the continental plates were pulled apart. This pulling apart, which continued until the Jurassic, led to the central zone subsiding as a graben allowing the sea to enter with the subsequent deposition of transgressive marine sediments. The Perth Basin architecture is dominated by listric, extensional faulting that formed during sedimentation and controlled the distribution of the sediments.
The primary mechanism for sedimentation was originally subsidence creating accommodation (space for sediments to accumulate), followed by fault extension and more recently, sediment loading, i.e. the basin continuing to subside because of the weight of sediments within it.
The eastern boundary of the main Perth Basin is the Darling Fault, topographically expressed as the Darling Scarp. Small outliers of the Perth Basin, such as the Collie Sub-basin, lie east of the Darling Fault.
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