Talk:Geelong Keys

Can we have a map of it's geographical location inserted somewhere? It is not a well known area, so people may like to know where it's located. Tonyxc600 (talk) 07:58, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

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"Charles La Trobe and the Geelong Keys" by Murray Johns
I found this article just now, printed in the Victorian Historical Journal Vol. 85, No. 2, December 2014. He concludes:

"The story of the ‘Geelong Keys’ is largely attributable to La Trobe and his misunderstandings....He failed to understand the fundamental relationship between the shell-bed and the underlying limestone in the area. On the basis of what Boucher had told him, he assumed that the shells and the keys had been dislodged from the wall of the excavation, at about head-height, or about three metres above sea level. In fact, they were found at the bottom of the hole, where the excavation intercepted the shell-bed overlying the limestone, about 1.5 metres above sea level. La Trobe wrongly assumed that the keys were as old as the shells, whereas we now know that the age of the shells has nothing to do with the age of the keys. La Trobe discounted his own observations about the apparent age of the keys (their modern appearance, with little rust) and tried to reconcile those observations with his idea of a geological timescale in years, which was grossly in error."

"Rawlinson’s error was in thinking that the shell-bed he had seen in the cliff nearby (as in the photograph) was what La Trobe had seen in the wall of the excavation. Gill made the same mistake in 1985 with his diagram of the geological section. Both Rawlinson and Gill perpetuated that aspect of La Trobe’s misunderstanding, which is now clarified for the first time."

"were dropped at the bottom of an open excavation by someone who walked into it in 1847, as La Trobe had done. The keys were probably discovered only a few hours or days after being dropped there,"

There's a lot more detail and comments about other writers, but I can't copy it here as it would be copyvio. The article needs a major rewrite in the light of this paper. Doug Weller talk 19:31, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for locating this Doug - Murray Johns' research looks very useful, as was his contribution to the Mahogany Ship legend. Nickm57 (talk) 20:04, 24 January 2018 (UTC)