The Darling Fault is one of the longest and most significant faults in Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, extending for at least 1500 km in a north–south orientation near the west coast of southern Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

. It is a major geological boundary separating the Archaean Yilgarn Craton

Yilgarn craton

The Yilgarn Craton is a large craton which constitutes the bulk of the Western Australian land mass. It is bounded by a mixture of sedimentary basins and Proterozoic fold and thrust belts...

 in the east from the younger Pinjarra Orogen and overlying Phanerozoic

Phanerozoic

The Phanerozoic Eon is the current eon in the geologic timescale, and the one during which abundant animal life has existed. It covers roughly 542 million years and goes back to the time when diverse hard-shelled animals first appeared...

 Perth Basin

Perth basin

The Perth Basin is a thick sedimentary basin in Western Australia. It lies beneath the Swan Coastal Plain west of the Darling Scarp, representing the western limit of the much older Yilgarn Craton, and extends further west offshore...

 to the west. The fault zone is very ancient and initially formed during the Proterozoic

Proterozoic

The Proterozoic is a geological eon representing a period before the first abundant complex life on Earth. The name Proterozoic comes from the Greek "earlier life"...

 Eon

Eon

-Science:* Aeon, a very long time* Eon , a collective problem solving project* Eon Mountain, in Canada* A measure of time in the geologic time scale- Fiction :* Eon , by Greg Bear...

.

In the Perth

Perth, Western Australia

Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....

 area, the Darling Fault must once have coincided with the Darling Scarp

Darling Scarp

The Darling Scarp, also referred to as the Darling Range or Darling Ranges, is a low escarpment running north-south to the east of the Swan Coastal Plain and Perth, Western Australia...

, the abrupt escarpment immediately east of the city of Perth, but the scarp has since eroded eastward of the fault, leaving a formation of foothills known as the Ridge Hill Shelf

Ridge Hill Shelf

The Ridge Hill Shelf is a landform that forms part of the foothills of the Darling Scarp, a low escarpment that runs parallel with the west coast in southwest Western Australia. It was formed by coastal erosion of the scarp in the Pleistocene, when the sea level was higher, and the scarp located...

. The fault is located on the western edge of the Ridge Hill Shelf; a good reference point of its location is the point where the Great Eastern Highway

Great Eastern Highway

The Great Eastern Highway is a major road between the Western Australian cities of Perth and Kalgoorlie. It is a key route for vehicles accessing the eastern wheatbelt and the eastern goldfields...

 passes over the current Eastern railway  line in Bellevue

Bellevue, Western Australia

Bellevue is an eastern suburb of Perth, Western Australia. Its Local Government Areas are the City of Swan and the Shire of Mundaring, and it is located at the foot of the slopes of Greenmount, a landmark on the Darling Scarp that is noted in the earliest of travel journals of the early Swan River...

.