The Sugarloaf is surrounded by the imposing Amphitheatre. The Amphitheatre was eroded into its present crescent shape about ten thousand years ago revealing colourful layers of sediment deposits.
Like the Sugarloaf, these layers divulge a geological timeline that dates as far back as 270 million years.The Amphitheatre has been formed through the erosion and weathering of sediments
laying on a base of Precambrian rocks, which in turn had previously been weathered into a shallow basin that contained the glacial lake during the late Permian (Giesecke, 1999),
it may have been the glacier itself that eroded the rock forming the basinThe red Pleistocene silts and sands that form the main area of cliff face
and the more recent lighter soils and calcretes above. In amongst these are found marine sandstones and fossiliferous layers.