The marine Tertiary rocks in the Pareora district are about 1,500 ft thick and range in age from ?upper Dannevirke Series to Awamoan. They are underlain and overlain conformably by two sets of coal-measures, each about 200 ft thick, but only the lower contains potentially workable lignite seams. The upper coal-measures of probable Southland age are overlain disconiormably or with slight angular unconformity by 600 ft of non-marine, weathered, greywacke gravels (of probable Waitotaran age) which have been folded and faulted together with the underlying Tertiary rocks. These tilted gravels are overlain unconformably by flat-lying, high-level gravels of Pleistocene age.