Under the harsh Early Cretaceous sun, a broad muddy river winds through a flat expanse of rusty-red earth. Along its banks grow clusters of squat, pine-like conifer trees and tangled ferns, crowding the water’s edge where the ground remains moist. Farther from the river, the soil dries and cracks; shallow lagoons shrink under the heat, and stretches of mudflat are peppered with blackened logs - the ashen relics of brushfires that periodically swept across the savanna-like floodplain. Over millions of years, this peaceful valley slowly gives way to the sea. Warm waves begin lapping at the margins of the land, and the brown clays turn to beach sand as the shoreline advances. By the Late Cretaceous, the entire scene lies beneath tranquil, azure waters. Where once green conifers stood, sunlight now dances through clear seawater above a carbonate sea-floor. Clouds of plankton bloom in the warmth, and as these countless microscopic algae die, their chalky remains drift down like fine snow - blanketing the old landscape in white lime mud. In time the sediment compacts and lithifies, so that long after the sea recedes, brilliant white cliffs stand as a silent testament to Compton Bay’s merged landscape history - red river plains buried under ancient tropical seas, united in stone.