Hi All We stayed two nights at Hamelin Homestead. It was a nice stay, the roads and sites in the park were made of shells which are abundant here. They also have their own lake, the water from the bore drives a turbine to generate electricity then it goes into the lake and is sent over the station to water the stock. The beach at Hamelin Pool is all shell, it has been built up over 6,000 years and is about 10m deep. Rain on the shell cause it to cement together much like cement, it was cut into blocks with crosscut saws and used to build numerous buildings in the area. Nowadays it is only used to patch up historical buildings. There is no phone or TV coverage so when we get to Denham is when this will be sent. There is a phenomenon called Stromatolites here, they are single celled creatures that have been around for billions of years. They survive in very salty water which is what Hamelin Pool is. The water is very shallow and owing to the rapid evaporation it is much saltier than normal sea water. They release oxygen into the air and that is how the planet survives, if it wasn’t for them then life as we know it would not exist. This place is a working sheep station, there are goats here as well. Although they are feral animals the stations fence them in and once a year round them up and send them to market. Cattle would not survive here as there is very little grass and is very short, the goats eat anything and everything. We have seen the goats all the way along the highway from Carnarvon. We called into a few spots on the way here, got some really good shots of bluffs. We even saw a shark swimming, from the distance we were I think it would have been about 2m long. Looking forward to getting to Denham, we have booked a flight over part of Shark Bay. It will take us over Steep Point which is the most westerly point of the mainland, I would have liked to drive there but we are not sure if we can get there. It is about 300km round trip of which about 100km is 4wd track so we would need a fair bit of time to do it. It would be a big day. Cheers for now Graham and Jenny
Posted on: Mon, 09 Sep 2013 12:48:17 +0000