Name details

Varne Plateau

Australian Antarctic Gazetteer Id 134456

Feature type: Plateau

Origin

This name originates from Australia. It is part of the Australian Antarctic Gazetteer.

Narrative

The plateau surface on Macquarie Island between Mt Ainsworth in the south and Stony Creek in the north. The plateau is thus distinct from the smaller plateau north of Stony Creek. The northern boundary coincides with the Finch-Langdon Fault and other boundaries are the boundary between the plateau and the escarpment surrounding the island. Ric Varne (born Riccardo Paravarni) was an English-born geologist who came to the Geology Department at the University of Tasmania in the mid 1960s as lecturer. He advanced through the system to be appointed Professor and sometime Head of Department in 1994. Professor Ric Varne was the leader of a group of three geologists from the University of Tasmania that first visited the island late in 1968 but Varne has been to the island several times since and has had many students and international collaborators working with him over the subsequent 30 years. The group spent only a few days there on this occasion, as part of the ANARE re-supply voyage at the end of 1968. His father was Italian but on Mussolini"s proscribed list and thus emigrated to the UK where Ric was born. The name on his birth certificate and his passport are different because his father anglicized the family name after Ric"s birth. His arrival in Tasmania coincided with the time of general acceptance of the concept of continental drift and the recognition of the vast difference in composition, structure and age between continental and oceanic crust. Having recognized the significance of the island, he was an active proponent of research there and international scientific publicity for its values.

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