05/11/2025
Khancobin long weekend Gliding with GCV.
Photo, story: Bernie Hochwimmer
Awesome soaring, reaching Kosiusko-Plateau & Tooma Dam. Three others from our MBGC, Roger, Peter and Whayne also participated with GCV.
# 1 Indi Ridge Line, ending at Mt Youngal (in cloud shadow~ 5,000'). Here I had some real excitement. A Meteorite with sparkling white and orange trail and green tinged white-hot core hurled WSW toward the ground. My flight log entry shows estimated time of 4.40, it was actually 4.30 pm. Moment's past as I flew towards the impact site, the shock wave from it I presumed, upended my glider into a dive I pulled out of with interesting moments!
Note the Gilmore Suture structural splay controlling the Indi Ridge and paddocks in the foreground.
Mt Unicorn Mo-Cu Ag porphyry left and below glider nose top.
# 2 Descending glider Delta-1 for Khancobin village airport, owned by the Snowy Hydro Authority. Valleys, farms, ranges and nature in this region …’Heaven on Earth’.
Mt Youngal (1,516m/4 974ft a.s.l.) head of the Khancobin Dam and the Indi Spur to the right.
Gilmore Suture- Geological & Geographical Influence:
Structures, porphyry mineralization, and geography here are controlled by the Gilmore Suture and its splay faults. It divides geological terranes that were once separated and collided during Cambro-Ordovician times, reaching mantle depth. This deep suture provided a fluid conduit emanating from later tectonic events, such as the Siluro-Devonian collisional and tensional mineralizing episodes, dotting copper-polymetalic porphyry, disseminated gold and tin mineralization through Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria. Locally, such mineralization extends down the Snowy River–Banambra region to the Victorian south coast—mostly now locked up in Nationalparks.
The Gilmore Suture and its splays markedly influence today’s physical geography, shaping plateaus, ranges, gorges, and dams, displayed in this series of glider shots.
And this controls atmosphere, weather and gliding! You might then well say geology controls us glider pilots, helping those with rocks in their head😆
The suture extends through the Beardmore Mountains in Antarctica, a remnant from Gondwana days. It and its major geological splays are responsible for many of New South Wales’ giant porphyry copper-gold and disseminated gold–stockwork deposits. To the north, it continues into Queensland beneath the Thomson Sedimentary Trough and is likely expressed as fractures along the northern tropical Queensland coast near Mt Windsor.
It is named after Gilmore Creek near Talbingo Dam—a gorge feature it physically controls.
