Basin Outline
The Jurassic-Cretaceous Bight Basin is a large, mainly offshore basin situated along the western and central parts of the continental margin of southern Australia , in water depths of less than 200 m to over 4000 m. The basin extends from south of Cape Leeuwin in the west to south of Kangaroo Island in the east, where it adjoins the Otway Basin (Bradshaw et al, 2003; Figure 1 [PDF, 433KB]). To the south, the uppermost sequences of the Bight Basin onlap highly extended continental crust and rocks of the continent-ocean transition on the abyssal plain between Australia and Antarctica (Sayers et al, 2001). The Bight Basin is overlain unconformably by the dominantly cool-water carbonates of the Cenozoic Eucla Basin. The basin contains five main depocentres-the Ceduna, Duntroon, Eyre, Bremer and Recherche sub-basins (Figure 1 [PDF, 433KB] and Figure 2 [PDF, 184KB]). The most prospective depocentre, the Ceduna Sub-basin, occurs in the eastern part of the Bight Basin. To the north and east of the main depocentres, a thin Bight Basin succession overlies Proterozoic basement (including the Gawler Craton and Albany-Fraser Orogen) and deformed Proterozoic-Early Paleozoic rocks of the Adelaide Fold and Thrust Belt (AFTB) (Figure 2 [PDF, 184KB]). Basement trends have had a profound influence on the structural development of the Bight Basin, controlling the location and orientation of early basin-forming structures (Stagg et al, 1990; Totterdell et al, 2000; Teasdale et al, 2003; Totterdell and Bradshaw, 2004).
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