Structural signature of sediment accretion in a Palaeozoic accretionary complex, southeastern Australia

Chaotic block-in-matrix melange, broken formation along high strain zones associated with large scale imbrication, early bedding-parallel cleavage, recumbent folds in turbidites, and structural complexity in cherts are key elements of a mid-Palaeozoic subduction complex in the eastern part of the Lachlan Fold Belt, southeastern Australia. The complex consists of an imbricated turbidite, chert and basalt sequence of mid-Cambrian to Late Ordovician age. Structural and biostratigraphic controls require a complexly imbricated sequence with reversals in younging seawards towards the inferred former trench/subduction zone, as in young subduction accretionary complexes such as the Kodiak accretionary complex in the Aleutians and the Shimanto complex of Japan. Subduction accretion or underplating in the Narooma accretionary complex is not typified by duplexing, but shows a strain-dependent transition from an “inland” belt of chevron-folding cut by reverse faults, to a coastal belt with an early bedding-parallel fabric, isoclinal-recumbent folding, poly-deformation and differentiated layering in quartzrich turbiditic greywackes. Greywacke units show multiple cleavage fabrics formed in one folding event. Cherts below the turbidites show multiple folding events and zones of broken formation with intense veining and stylolitisation. The structurally lowest units, including deformed pillow basalts and block-in-matrix melange, show strong planar-linear fabrics. In the block-in-matrix melange, prolate-shaped pods of greywacke and chert are aligned sub-parallel to the bulk extension direction defined by mica pull-aparts and pressure shadows on pyrite within the mudstone matrix. Mica neocrystallisation and pressure solution are the dominant deformation mechanisms at the base of the complex.