Monthly Archive for December, 2006

Hamelin Pool

At the very end of Shark Bay not too far from the intersection with the Highway 1 there is a small sheep station by the name of Hamelin Pool. It’s not labeled by name on the above map, but there is a black dot representing Hamelin Pool at the very end of the eastern bay of Shark Bay. Hamelin Pool is not famous due to it’s sheep ranching history; it is famous because of it’s stromatolites. What’s a stromatolite you ask? Just the oldest living thing on Earth as you will soon see.

Driving down another dirt road it didn’t take us to long to reach the sheep station. The sheep station now serves primarily as a caravan park and the home of the world’s only stromatolite musuem:

The above picture is of the old telegraph station at Hamelin Pool. Years ago Hamelin Pool served as the main telegraph station for the entire Shark Bay region of Australia. Today Hamelin Pool continues it’s tradition of being the outlet that connects the region to the rest of Australia by hosting a large telecommunications tower near the station.

Even if you have no interest in seeing the stromatolites, the walk to the beach to view them is free and the walk is a quite pleasant 45 minute round trip walk. It is a good way to take a break and have lunch during a long drive through the Western Australian outback. As I walked down the beach the first thing I noticed was what appeared to be something that looked like old Roman ruins. However, what I found out was that here in Hamelin Pool the early settlers cut out large white blocks of sandstone to construct buildings with. All the old buildings in the area that remain were built with sandstone from this quarry.

Not to far from the quarry I reached the coastline and instantly noticed the blackish color to the beach:

I continued to follow the trail along the beach and found a grave that was the final resting place for one of the areas early settlers:

In Search of Stromatolites

Not to far past the grave is a dock that sticks out into the bay to allow visitors great view of the stromatolites:

These little clumps of black rock are actually the world’s oldest currently living form of life. The stromatolites are composed of a cyanobacteria that according to fossil records first came into existence 3.5 billion years ago during the Pre-Cambrian period of Earth’s early history. The cyanobacteria live in only extremely salty waters and the Earth’s early oceans were much more saltier than they are today. This caused the stromatolites to thrive at the time. Located at the very end of Shark Bay in the shallowest waters of the bay, the heavy concentrations of salt here has allowed the cyanobacteria to thrive here as well. The cyanobacteria grows upward out of the ocean and some of them have been known to grow as high as 1.5 meters.

Early scientists had long known about stromatolites through fossil records, but they had always considered them to be extinct. The reason believed that they went extinct was because the cyanobacteria conduct an early version of photosynthesis that released oxygen in the air. This oxygen is what led to the rise of life as we know it today. The combination of oceans becoming less salty and land based creatures walking on the fragile stromatolites and destroying them led to their extinction. However, in 1956 a Australian scientist “discovered” the stromatolites at Hamelin Pool. This would be the equivalent of a paleontologist discovering a living dinosaur. The early ranchers had long known about the stromatolites but never realized how special they were. They just thought they were a bunch of unusual rocks:

In the above picture you can see the wagon wheel ruts from when the early settlers brought their wagons filled with wool to be loaded on to waiting ships to take the wool to markets in Perth. Since 1956 no more wagons or people are allowed to walk on the stromatolites anymore due to the locals realizing how special these worthless rocks had become. Not all stromatolites have survived the abuse over the years and remains of dead stromatolites can be seen scattered on the beach:

Anyway it is interesting to think that life as we know it today is all because of what was thought to be useless rocks at Shark Bay, Western Australia. The stromatolites are just one of many strange things to be discovered in Australia.

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Denham 

There is plenty to see and do at Shark Bay besides going to Monkey Mia. I highly recommend it visiting Shark Bay to go and see the surrounding country side of the peninsula. A four wheel drive vehicle would be ideal to really experience the peninsula. Since we had a campervan we really had a hard time navigating the dirt roads on the peninsula that we weren’t supposed to take the campervan on. However, by driving slow and careful we were able to see some of the incredible areas on the peninsula.

Here is a view over looking the harbor at Denham:

You can see the various sailboats out on the water in this picture. What I will always remember about this picture was that after taking this shot; I had the scare of my life when I came face to face with a big black snake. It quickly slithered off once it saw me so I couldn’t get a picture, but taking a picture was the last thing on my mind. The only thing on my mind was hauling ass back to the campervan. Yet another encounter for me with some of Australia’s deadliest wildlife.

Eagle Bluff 

The best views of Shark Bay can be found from a place called Eagle Bluff. It took some time to get the campervan down that road, but it was worth the views. Here is a view looking towards the south from Eagle Bluff:

This is supposed to be the best spot in the area to view the tiger sharks that give Shark Bay it’s name. In the shallow water below we could see some of the fish swimming around but none of the tiger sharks. Right across from the cliff we were standing on was a small island:

If you look closely at the island you can see the white coloring that is actually bird guano. Decades ago intrepid outback pioneers dug up the guano on the island and sold it to farmers as fertilizer. Just goes to show if you think your job sucks, it’s still better than standing in the hot sun and digging bird crap for a living.

Here is the view looking towards the north:

The sliver of land sticking out of the bay was used by the Aborigines to catch fish. They used to make a sand bar extending from the sliver of land that would prevent the fish from swimming out to the center of the bay when the tide rolled out thus trapping the fish. Additionally near the sliver of land is a natural water spring that the Aborigines used as their water source as well. To this day local Aborigines still make use of the water source.

Across Shark Bay we could actually see a salt mine that is still in operation on the isolated peninsula that brackets the western side of the bay:

If you look closely at this picture you can see how the shallow sandy water turns into a darker green color towards the center of the bay:

The dark green color is the seaweed that grows in the salty Shark Bay waters and is what feeds the bay’s large colony of dugongs. From Eagle Bluff we then began hiking on a four wheel drive road towards the south. Looking eastward we could see the long lonely dirt we drove up to reach the bluff:

The trail continued to skirt the steep cliffs of the bay and all around us in the sand you could see the footprints of the various animals that call Shark Bay home:

Fortunately there were no more snakes. At the end of the trail we came to a lookout that provided a view of the southern end of the bay:

If you look really closely in the above picture, you can make out a handful of fishermen that were fishing along the beach that day. You couldn’t ask for better fishing weather than at Shark Bay. Actually you couldn’t ask for better weather for any outdoor activity than at Shark Bay.

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Prior Posting: Sailing on Shark Bay

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