By Dugald Gray (Australia)

This red marbled Jasper stone with its quartz veining on dark purple rhyolite resembles a Chinese meat stone or Shiwu stone of partly roasted marbled beef. Worn and partly polished by water action, the marbled jasper and rhyolite, collected from Mudgeeraba Creek in 2021, is an erosional remnant of mineralization following volcanic eruptions some 220 mya in Australia’s Gold Coast Hinterland in South East Queensland.

The Shiwu stone is served on a platter of petrified wood, of similar geological age and geography to the Jasper, but from Madagascar. The platter is a slice from the silicified trunk of a Monkey Puzzle tree, a type of conifer that grew on the Gondwanan super-continent when Madagascar was joined to India, Australia, and Antarctica. When Gondwana broke up about 160 mya, these ‘cousins’ traveled together for a while, before parting and going their separate ways, with Australia splitting off about 120 mya. Beef Gondwana celebrates and re-connects two remarkable stone relics long since parted, but which once shared a supercontinent.