Thursday 6 September – I’ve just looked at my watch and it is losing time at a rate of knots. Before I know it, it will be yesterday!!  Up this morning at about 7, and didn’t get away till about 9.15 – we were a bit slow off the mark.  Grant spoke to his doctor and he’s happy for Grant to keep on with the same dosage until his next test in a fortnight.  Probably have to be done just prior to leaving W.A.  So after doing that and filling up with petrol we were on our way – southward bound.

Today has been a pretty good day, coolish breeze early on, which eased as the day went on, but is now strengthening again, and quite cool.  However the sun was out all day, and during the afternoon it was lovely.  The drive here was long and lacked any great interest.  The countryside was very flat, devoid of anything but low scrubby bushes, but as we got closer to Denham in Shark Bay the vegetation became much healthier looking, now being nice and green instead of the dry brownish specimens we have been seeing.   In today’s 330 odd kilometres we didn’t see one house until we got within a few kilometres of Denham, but we did see two roadhouses, one at which we stopped for a snack at the turn off to Denham.  But we have now started seeing more wildflowers, which is a plus.

Part of the way into Denham we turned off to go to see the historic Hamelin Pool Telegraph Station, the shell block quarry and the stromatolites.  This was quite an interesting detour, with three very diverse attractions.  The telegraph station was built in 1884 on the Perth to Roebourne telegraph line, and the building is now being used as a historic museum.  We then went for a bit of a walk to the shell block quarry which is on the beach.  Here these tiny coquina shells are so compacted that they are solid, and in the past were used as a building material once they were sawn into blocks.  Now the quarry is heritage listed and is only mined when repair work needs to be done on any existing building, and there are several such buildings in Denham.

The shell quarry.

A close-up of the compacted shells.

                                                                                   

Then we went to see the stromatolites.  Now just to save you diving for your dictionary or googling the word, I’ll tell you what they are.  First of all they look a little weird, but are a very rare life form harking back quite some time.   To quote Google’s definition of stromatolites: ‘stromatolites are rock-like structures built by microbes (single-celled cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae). Shark Bay’s stromatolites are only 2,000 to 3,000 years old, but they are similar to life forms found on Earth up to 3.5 billion years ago! They provide a unique insight into what the world was like at the dawn of time.                    

Until about 500 million years ago, stromatolites were the only macroscopic evidence of life on the planet.  The microbes that built the stromatolites were an essential building block for the evolution of more complex life forms.  Hamelin Pool is one of only three places on Earth where you can see living marine stromatolites. (The other two places are in the Bahamas.) Stromatolites are found in Hamelin Pool because its water is twice as salty as normal seawater.

   Few predators and competitors can survive these conditions, allowing the microbes to flourish and form stromatolites much as they did billions of years ago’.

A family of stromatolites.

We chatted to a busload of NZ tourists while we were at Hamelin pool, and one old dear in particular was a bit of a dag. 

It was probably about half past two when we got to Denham, and checked in at the Seaside Tourist Park, situated right on the beach.  Denham seems to be a nice little town, and we’ll have a look around tomorrow.  We spent the rest of the afternoon (after having a late lunch) sitting around having cuppas, reading, talking to passers by, and then I did a bit of housework and gave my sneakers a much needed scrub and bleach.  They were disgusting – with red bulldust ingrained, and I’m not sure that they are very much better, but at least I’ve tried.  They may have to get the flick when we get home if I can’t get the red out of them.  Anyway, they are hanging out on our clotheshorse outside the van, and hopefully the wind will help to dry them (if it doesn’t blow them away!)