Stromatolites!

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Hey ho, day two of my trip up the West Australia coast.

Happily not too much driving in the morning at least, since Kalbarri is pretty close to the Murchison River, the site of The Loop and the Z-Bend Gorges, two extremely awesome places. The surrounding area didn't seem particularly promising, being rather flat bush. Then suddenly a massive gash in the landscape appeared as if from nowhere. Really, words can't do the gorges justice, at least not any that I can think of. I can just go, 'yeah, there were, like, these gorges, and they were,like, really spectacular'. Just look at the pictures. Hmm, not even my pictures cut it. Particularly cool was 'Nature's Window', an arch of rock which forms an interesting frame for views of the river below.

I did get to see some interesting and quite pretty spiders, which I don't think were lethal. Actually, I haven't seen much of the notoriously deadly Aussie wildlife so far.

Well, after the gorges, and a lunchtime plagues by masses of deeply irritating flies, we headed off to Shark Bay, and more specifically the site of the Stromatolites. These were, in fairness, not all that much to look at, but the marine biology nerd in me was fascinated, not so much by what they looked like, but what they represented. Stromatolites are formed by single celled organisms that form a thin film which traps sediment, then further cells grow over that sediment, trapping more sediment and so on, creating the stromatolite itself, which has the general appearance of a rock. Not so exciting. However, fossil stromatolites virtually identical to those found today in Shark Bay have been found to be about 3.5 billion years old- making them one of the oldest organisms on the planet, and back in the day it was these organisms which diligently respired and produced oxygen, eventually putting enough oxygen into the atmosphere to allow oxygen-breathing organisms to evolve and survive and develop in complexity to such forms as lions and elephants and marine biology nerds. Good, eh?

So enough of the biology lecture in the middle of an alleged travel blog. Next up, Shell Beach. I didn't have especially high hopes for this place, I mean, I've been to beaches before, and quite often they have had shells on them. So what? Well, I hadn't quite prepared myself for the periodic extreme literalness of the Aussie mindset. Yep, this was very definitely a shell beach. As in, a beach made entirely and exclusively of shells, mostly whole and unbroken. It was actually pretty freaky and I haven't seen anything quite like it before.

So after that we made our way to a youth hostel at Monkey Mia for steak and sausages and a certain quantity of 'goon'- basically wine so cheap it doesn't even come in a bottle at all, just a bag inside a cardboard box. Classy.

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Photos

Murchison Gorge
A really awesome valley

Bottom of Murchison Gorge
The view at the bottom

Natures Window
You have to like this

Stromatolites
They mightn't look like much, but they are very interesting- really