Western Australia
Trip Start
Apr 16, 2007
1
75
88
Trip End
Jul 2008
Where I stayed
Denham Caravan Park
Shark Bay, Australia
Thursday, February 21, 2008
If you are interested these values are:
i)as an outstanding example representing the major stages in the earth's evolutionary history;
ii)as an outstanding example representing significant ongoing ecological and biological processes;
iii)as an example of superlative natural phenomena;
iv)containing important and significant habitats for in situ conservation of biological diversity
We visitied Hamelin Pool to see the Stromatolites. These look like rocks but are actually microorganisms that represent the oldest form of life on earth and are representative of life-forms from some 3,500 million years ago. They are known to produce oxygen and are thought to be the reason that our atmosphere oxygen levels rose to become breathable air....pretty important stuff, but still looked like a bunch of rocks to us!
At Hamelin Pool is also the 'Shell Quarry'. Now not in use and protected by World Heritage, all the buildings in the local area and Denham would be made from these Shell bricks...
Next stop was Shell Beach...a beautiful 50Km stretch of beach with nothing but tiny white shells on it. These tiny cockles thrive in this area of high salinity and have accummulated to such an extent that earlier settlers built bricks, houses and streets out of them.
We moved on to Eagle Bluff which is an area along a cliff where you can walk along a boardwalk to gaze down at what ever happens to be swimming below. Dugong (sea cows), sting rays, sharks and turtles are all common in this area. (We spotted 2 small sharks...)
We stayed at Denham the night, in a caravan site right on the beach...this was one of the cheaper places as we only paid $19.50 for a pitch, but was in a great location. Met some lovely people who we went on to bump into at various other places around WA.
