Australian Mega Tsunami field evidence
The challenge was to pursue the sources of this evidence to the ocean and detect the signatures of catastrophic tsunami in the coastal landscape. This landscape is also one subject to some of the most intense tropical storms in the world (Nott 2004) associated with winds in excess of 300 km hr21 and storm surges of 3.6 m (Bureau of Meteorology 2000). Two sites stand out as showing evidence of tsunami. The first is located at Cape Voltaire directly west of Kalumburu. Here, waves beyond the capacity of cyclones have truncated the ends of headlands. This erosion was not controlled by bedrock lithology or structure as exemplified by the erosion into columnar basalt on the headland.