Magnetic Termite Mounds?

A typical Pilbara termite mound

Termite mounds are ubiquitous in arid Australia.  I’ve looked at them with variations of awe and boredom for twenty five years – mostly from trucks.  For some reason, they are not very abundant in the areas I’ve studied the geology.  So most of my observations below are passing, literally.  Termite mounds aren’t anthills; I’ve seen one over four meters – seventeen feet - high and with a volume of at least three couple cubic meters.  They’re commonly at least a meter high.  Whatever the size, mounds are truly edifices.  They have vaguely columnar shapes with rounded tops, and rise abruptly from the surrounding landscape, whether it’s a grassy plain or a rocky slope.  They seem anomalous and clearly organic.  Texturally, the surfaces of the mounds are composed of several thousand oval blobs the size of a finger accreted together to form a single mass.  Imagine making a sculpture out of toothpaste squeezed from tubes, and you’ll get the idea.  Internally, they are a honeycomb of passageways, based on the abandoned and decayed mounds I’ve come across. 

Close up of a Pilbara termite mound

Termite mounds seem to vary geographically in two ways: color and shape.  Color certainly reflects the underlying soil.  In the Pilbara they’re most frequently deep red-brown.  In the Red Centre, they are a lighter orange-red.  In the East Kimberley and NT, they are tan to brown.  Mounds seem to be biggest in the NT and smallest in the Red Centre.  In terms of shape, Pilbara mounds are massive, and often seem to have a point on top.  Red Centre mounds are more truly columnar in shape.  NT mounds are particularly elaborate; many feature multiple columns amalgamated into a single mass.  I wonder if this more complex structure reflects erosion caused by higher annual rainfall.

I should also say that in all three areas, termite mounds are either loners or joiners.  The joiners occur in fields of up to several dozen mounds, each a unique shape and size.  I plead etymological ignorance: I don’t know how connected they are underground, nor how mounds propagate within a field.  On the other hand, in the Pilbara at least, the really big mounds are isolated.  It’s possible that these variations reflect different termite species.

Pilbara - a field of termite mounds

So what about the so called Magnetic Termite Mounds?  When I read that these things existed in Litchfield National Park in the NT, I filed them away as something to go see if time allowed.  The MTMs, as I’ll call them, sounded like a variation on my categories of termite moundness.  I figured that the termites either incorporated magnetic minerals into their mounds, or that they were magnetically oriented in some way.  Intriguing, but seeing them was a back burner plan: termite mounds are interesting, but hey, they are not rocks.  Time allowed, so as I wrote in an earlier post, Paul and I headed to Litchfield in hope of a final night outdoors in the NT.  We were thwarted by the heat and crowds, but not before seeing the MTMs.

The access road into Litchfield wound through outcrops of red sandstone and conglomerate.  Our progress was slowed by any number of slug-like vehicles; cars towing trailers, locals in old cars, and distracted tourists.  I passed them when I could.  Eventually the MTM pullout appeared.  It was large and full of vehicles.  There is not much else to do on the way into Litchfield except this stop, other than sweat and pass slow vehicles.  Or maybe drive one. 

We got out and geared up.  A short stroll along a boardwalk ended at the edge a flood plain.  The large, crescent-shaped area looked like it got pretty damp in the Wet.  It was full of termite mounds.  I was dumbfounded.  They had huge sheet-like shapes, like giant cooling fins.  I had brought my GPS unit along to see about the magnetic business.  Using its compass app, it was soon clear that the MTMs weren’t oriented with any relation to the Earth’s magnetic field.  This had been my assumption.  Instead, they formed a long arc that followed the broad curve of the stream drainage where they occurred.  What to make of this? 

I thought the MTMs were brilliant.  What whimsical shapes to see, what a mystery on a hot winter day.  As with much of my experience in the NT, they challenged my mental model of termite mound-ness.  They were worth the drive to Litchfield. 

MTMs?

More MTMs, note "normal" termite mound in rear.

The park signage offered an explanation for the MTMs.  Their environment is unusual; most mounds form in dry settings, while the MTMs have been built in a stream channel.  There was direct evidence of this at the MTM site.  A “normal” termite sat just off the stream drainage.  Anyway, the wet setting means that when it gets hot, the termites can’t go underground, as they apparently do in normal environments.  To avoid sauna like conditions the MTMers built these giant platy mounds, which have more surface area and thus stay cooler.  This seems plausible to me; if not it’s a good hypothesis.

One final comment: termite mounds of any shape and origin are hard.  I kicked one, and my foot hurt for several days afterward.  I doubt I could knock one over with a truck.

The Top End

6/28: We arrived back in Darwin in the evening. In advance; it had seemed a good idea to make a hotel rezo for a night. I was curious about downtown Darwin; it’s an old town, has some interesting history (much communication with Asia, the Japanese Navy bombed it repeatedly during World War II, etc.), and hey, it was a new place. However, I did not realize that 1) I’d booked a hotel on Mitchell Street, the main area of nightlife, 2) the USS Peleliu, with several thousand sailors and Marines on board, would be in town, and 3) our room, while having two beds, was approximately 8’ x14’ in size. Paul was a good sport about all of this.

Well, what to do. The room had AC; the World Cup was on cable. We found a decent pizza joint. The waterfront provided a nice stroll in the humid dark tropical air. We saw a number of plaques dedicated to the servicemen and their units from WWII.

I stopped at the backpacker hostel associated with our hotel to do some internet prior to sleep. This became a bit strange when I realized that much of the room trade happening around me was just that: military personnel and their “dates”. The older looking enlisted men seemed to be doing better, as it were, than the ones who looked sixteen or so. I’ve not been around such an overt scene since I was in Indonesia, a long time ago. It was both saddening and distracting to see these events go on around me.

6/29: Leaving Darwin was not a problem. Some casting about and the related traumas of driving on the left in the new unknown city provided food, gas, and other supplies. A short stretch south on Rt 1, the Stuart Highway, and I turned our current vehicle, a Toyota RAV 4, east towards Kakadu National Park on the Victoria Highway. More subtropical landscape rolled by. Fruit plantations near Darwin gave way to tropical woodland; acacias and grasses (for a change) and a variety of broadleaf trees – myrtles, kapoks, and others. It was 34oC; I’ll guess humidity was in the 70% range. The air grew smoky; lots of spot fires in the bush. I assume that these were deliberately set for land management purposes. The Aboriginals have been doing this for up to 60,000 years, so it’s become kinda ecologically necessary. Mid-winter, i.e., the dry season – now – is the time to burn. It began to seem unlikely that Kakadu would provide much in the way of dramatic vistas.

The National Park boundary came and went. The Victoria Highway continues past the park further east into Arnhemland; this area is largely Aboriginal preserve; one needs a permit to stop there. Maybe on a future visit.

A stop at the Jabiru Visitor Centre gave us permission to stay in Kakadu, however. We found a campsite near Muirella Park, on Djarradjin Billabong. It was still 34oC. Being in the air conditioned RAV 4 seemed a good idea, so we drove to Ubirr, in the northeastern corner of the park, to see the sunset. Ubirr composes part of the sandstone escarpment of Kakadu; a series of ridges and jump ups that more or less divide the park into two parts. The lower, northern bits of the park – mudflats, mangroves, and monsoon forest - run up to the Gulf of Carpentaria. This part is largely swampy and inaccessible to Americans without boats, and who aren’t that into fishing or wildlife, especially birds or large carnivorous reptiles.

The escarpment at Ubirr also has lots of sandstone overhangs. Like Keep River, many of these cavities featured Aboriginal paintings. They were extraordinary, truly world class art. The paintings, in shades of red, ochre, and white, focused on Aboriginal mythology, such as the Rainbow Serpent, and X-ray style depictions of many of the important local and huntable things to eat – barramundi and other fish, turtles, wallabies. There was also a spectrum of humanoid figures; clearly male or female, but I was not clear on their importance.

Between these overhangs and the upcoming sunset, Ubirr was swarmed with people. It was difficult to get a decent look at many of the art sites; ranger talks and other tourists filled the spaces behind the fences (the art is all quite delicate, so is off limits, like in any good museum).

As sunset approached, I followed Paul up the escarpment trail to the primary viewing area. Unfortunately, this was to be a repeat of last year’s sundown experience at Uluru; we shared the vista with a good six hundred to one thousand of our tourist colleagues. The multitude included at least two tours comprised of high school students; their hormonal fizz added to the distraction of the people around us.

These human interferences were unfortunate. The 360 degree view from the escarpment was breaktaking – really. A wide open vista over green grasslands to the west was balanced by the stony cliffs of the escarpment punctuated by high gum trees in the east. It would have been lovely to sit on the edge in a comfy spot and watch the light change, the birds emerge, and swat the occasional mosquito. This was not possible. In addition, smoke from bushfires in the park gave the scene a slightly apocalyptic feel. We left early, and avoided the mass exodus of trucks, cars, buses, and other conveyances once it got dark.

Bonus Time in the East Kimberley

6/27: We had originally planned four nights in the Bungle Bungle. However, after three full days, it was clear we had visited all the parts of the park that were accessible. Did I write earlier that it was hot? Several other visitors we had chatted up had recommended spending time Keep River National Park, which is just to the east of Kununurra, across the state border in the Northern Territory. It was an easy consensus to head there after our helicopter flight.

First the drive west to Rt. 95. The dirt track seemed slower during the day, but maybe this was more leisure time to observe the geology (abundant folds and faults; much contorted sedimentary and crystalline rock) and flora. Then the run north, diesel and diet Coke in Kununurra, and onto Keep River.

I’d never heard of Keep River before. My planning obsession had focused further west in the Kimberley, and east in the Kakadu. The park was thus a lovely surprise. The usual dirt track, along a flood plain covered by tall bunch grasses with a sprinkling of acacias and boabs - led to a half full campground. After a siesta to outlast the afternoon heat, we wandered out along a track following the lower Keep River.

It was still quite hot. The track meandered through what my mind was coming to categorize as a typical coastal Kimberley landscape. Quite dry in the wet, but a variety of acacias and other gums, a wide spectrum of trees I don’t know, some boabs, and a grassy ground cover. The latter thankfully did not include spinifex; plenty of time to have the repeated joys of that in the Pilbara next month. Another new and common plant was a sort of palm with razor-sharp leaves; it caught my eye because the individual palm fronds grew individually from the trunk, forming a spiral pattern - a picture above.

This was also clearly a fire landscape. At least half of the area we walked through had been burnt in the past year. Black ash covered the ground, punctuated by new grass tufts. The trunks of the larger plants; trees and the brutal palm –were blackened. The trail disturbed this ground cover; underneath the thin layer of ash and debris was lots of white quartz sand. This was clearly a floodplain. Being here in the Wet might be easier in a boat.

The trail we were following was in fact terminated by flood damage. It ended at a rock shelter. A variety of Aboriginal pictographs decorated the smooth rock faces. Emu, kangaroo, and some cryptic humanoid figures. The interpretive sign said that some of the Keep River sites have been occupied over 20,000 years. This was quite believable. Compared to the Pilbara or the Red Centre, this was an area of abundance; lots of fish, plants, and other stuff to eat. I could imagine an evening of relative repletion say 5,000 BCE; there might then be time and energy to make a painting or two.

The landscape would also be inspiring. Before reaching the rock shelter, the trail wound along the base of a rocky ridge; more sandstone and conglomerate, very similar to the Bungle Bungle. Here though the rock was less banded, and more deeply weathered and faulted. Still very pretty in the late afternoon light. I bet there were wallabies to hunt up there too.

A good end to time in the Kimberley.

Aus 15: The New Places

My last entry talked about the work of Australia Fifteen: the part that the grant covers. What about the fun? On Fifteen, a week of new places exploration happens first. I’m being joined for this leg by my frequent travel buddy Paul. He’s in the throes of getting a job in Perth (if I weren’t happy for him, strangulation would be in order). Last summer’s pleasure excursion, with both Paul and Louis, was in the central deserts of Australia: Uluru, Kata Tjuta, Kings Canyon, and Alice Springs. This year, we’ll be further north, in the subtropics. After a lot of investigation, we’ve settled on a bipartite itinerary: splitting our time between the Kimberley Region of Western Australia and Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. My initial urge was to just visit the Kimberley. Lots of desert and rocks – my kind of place. Then I realized that more than half of our waking time would be driving in order to glimpse the area’s highlights. This is normal in Outback Australia, but since this year’s field season will have a lot of driving, we’ve decided to focus on one spot: the Bungle Bungles Range, more recently named Purnululu National Park. The Bungle Bungles are my desert fix. It is one of those places that is strikingly and uniquely scenic, hard to get to, and largely unheard of outside of Australia. A rough analogy would be Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in the US. I’ve wanted to go there since first hearing its name in 1985. It features lots of exposed sedimentary rock, which has weathered into a variety of gorges and “beehive” structures. It just looks like a fun place to hike, poke around, and photography.

Getting the Bungle Bungles will be the usual multi-tube adventure. After flying from San Francisco to Sydney, we take a domestic jet to Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory. After a couple hours to feel jet lag, we fly on a puddle jumper to Kununurra, in the East Kimberley. With a night of recovery, we rent a 4WD vehicle and make the five hour drive to the Bungle Bungles, and start camping.

Eventually we’ll fly back to Darwin, rent another vehicle, and head east to Kakadu National Park. Kakadu was Paul’s idea. It’s not arid, so it was off my radar screens. Like the Bungle Bungles, Kakadu is another gem largely unknown outside of Aus. It’s a huge expanse combining river plains that drain north to the Gulf of Carpentaria (lots of birds and crocodiles) and a southern sandstone escarpment that’s cut into dramatic canyons. It looks beautiful and lush – even in the dry season, when we’ll be there. In addition to these natural charms, Kakadu has been home to Aboriginal groups for at least 40,000 years. The park has several significant rock art sites. These are stylistically more elaborate and complex than the petroglyphs I’ve see in WA and the NT. As I wrote last summer, I’ve gradually become more attuned to Aboriginal Australia; the art, the places, and the people. Kakadu is an opportunity to further this osmotic process. When I read the park literature, I sense that visiting Kakadu is not going to a park; it’s visiting part of cultural homeland. The Aboriginal culture persistent has persisted enough that I sense it through the overprint of colonization. Or so it feels from pictures and words. We will see what ground truth is like.

Australia Fifteen: Preamble

A year proceeds quickly. My last entry was a series of reflections on Australia Fourteen. Suddenly it’s time for my fifteenth trip to what Bill Bryson calls “A Sunburned Land”. The upcoming trip follows a similar arc to last year. First, a week of poking around in new areas, i.e., vacation. “New areas” on this trip means the Kimberley Region of Western Australia, particularly the Bungle Bungles, and Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. Assuming I survive crocodile assaults in the Kakadu, this holiday will be followed by a few weeks of field research in the Pilbara.

Recap and Plans

In case you did not read my blog last year, check out this entry for explanation of how I’ve come to be a recidivist geologist/visitor in Australia. The short version is that I’m currently on a grant through my work with Oberlin College to study meteorite impact deposits. These strata are really old; the four layers we’ve recognized so far accumulated on the sea floor around 2.5 billion years or go, plus or minus 70 million years. The rocks we look at have been uplifted and very well preserved; they comprise the rocks of the Hamersley Basin. They outcrop in the Pilbara Region of Western Australia: the Outback with lots of iron mines. We’ve done a lot of work demonstrating that these layers formed after very large extraterrestrial impacts, and sorting out their environmental effects – massive tsunami and underwater landslides. On a personal level, in the twenty-five years I’ve been going down under, I’ve become extremely fond of the continent and its rocks, plants, animals and people. I always look forward to return and further exploration. I also relish the time away from the normal for reflection and restoration.

Australia Fifteen has two major scientific goals. The first is to finish up the main work of the grant project, which is to make detailed lateral measurements of the best exposed and preserved impact layer in the Hamersley Basin: the Bee Gorge Spherule Layer. I have a couple final sites to visit, including the mine property we were thwarted from reaching last year. We call the impact layers “spherule layers” because their most distinctive component is lots and lots of BB-sized spherical particles. These spherules formed from the cloud of vaporized rock blown out of the impact crater. They subsequently settled to the surface, forming a fairly unique sedimentary layer.

The second goal is more exploratory. The 2009 field season ended dramatically with discovery of a new Hamersley Basin spherule layer. We named this the Paraburdoo Spherule Layer, which I’ll call the PSL to save you all from trying to pronounce Par-a-bur-doo in your heads. By the way, Paraburdoo is one of the local mining towns, and its name comes from a presumably local Aboriginal dialect; “paraburdoo” means “meat feathers”. I can only hope this refers to emus or bustards, and not corellas or galahs, the local, nasty cockatoos. I’d describe them as gaudy crows, but that would be insulting crows. As I wrote last year, I literally stumbled upon the PSL, a 2 centimeter thick layer of impact debris, at my personal nadir point for Australia Fourteen. I was tired, cranky, sore and possibly flatulent (Louis – my field assistant - had cooked the night before). I climbed a rubbly hill, looked down, and there was the PSL.

This was particularly exciting because it was new. It’s the fourth spherule layer we’ve found in the Hamersley Basin. Based on looking at similar rocks in South Africa, I knew very roughly where it should be in the Hamersley rock sequence, but it was dead awesome to find it. However, since the PSL revealed itself almost at the end of last year’s field season, it remains a single point on a map. This is very unsatisfactory; we have no sense of the PSL’s distribution, or how its internal characteristics change from place to place. So I have put together a list of about a dozen exploratory sites that might have PSL outcrops. This will mean driving to the far reaches of the Hamersley Basin; seeing new areas and places I have not been for upwards of seventeen years. I expect this to be frustrating; the PSL interval is generally poorly exposed, the layer is damn thin, and it outcrops amidst nasty rubbly limestone. As some compensation for this, we’ll also spend a couple of days looking at drill core that might contain the PSL in the Geological Survey of Western Australia Core Library in Perth. Looking a core has its own challenges; rocks can look completely different when they are extracted from the ground than they do “normally” in a weathered outcrop.

Louis will again be my assistant and companion on this part of the journey. He’s an Oberlin student, a double major in geology and jazz trumpet. His help was outstanding last year. Not only is he bright and observant, but he can cook and put up with how inner-directed I get in the field. He’s one of the best student assistants we’ve had. I’m looking forward to more time with him. He’s going walkabout prior to meeting me in Perth, spending a couple weeks in New Zealand. I’m trusting that he’ll appear in Perth on the right day.

Some Places To Stay

I have frequently imagined writing travel literature, but never reviewing travel destinations. Nonetheless, this post seemed right.

1. Alice On Todd – Alice Springs, Northern Territory. Four nights Nice, clean, well-appointed two bedroom self-catering unit. Quiet with a decent view of the Todd River (dry) off the balcony. Reception was efficient, friendly, and easy to communicate with via email. Good kitchen with ample cutlery, utensils, plates, pots, etc. The small pool might have felt good in summer. About one mile from downtown: a nice walk, although a bit chilly at night. Only problem: this was a second floor unit, and the staircase too it was a bit narrow and long to carry with luggage.

2. Mounts Bay Waters Lodge – Perth, Western Australia. Three nights. Another two bedroom self-catering unit, in a complex of multistory apartment buildings. Only one block was a hotel. Overlooks the Stirling and Graham Farmer Freeways, but quiet. The unit was recently upgraded in inconsistent ways. The new cabinets looked nice but did not open properly, jamming on the floor. The water closet had a new toilet, but the wall opposite it needed patching. The kitchen was well equipped; a dishwasher was a nice touch. There was only one small trash bin in the five room suite. The hotel is adjacent to Perth city centre and Kings Park, which was great for access to services, shops, and nice walks. The 24 hour reception staff was always courteous and helpful. Underground secure car park worked well once our key card was reset.

3. Karijini Eco Retreat Campground – Karijini National Park, Western Australia. One night. This used to be the Park’s Savannah Campground, where I’ve stayed several times. It’s now run by an Aboriginal-owned concessionaire (this confuses me a bit; all the staff seemed to be young Canadians). It’s been upgraded with cabins, a pub/restaurant, and showers, water, and flush loos in the campground – all solar powered. It was disappointing. The campground is dirtier than previously; our site had swarms of ants, clearly attracted by the food people had tossed into the bush (all trash is supposed to be carried out of the park) and maybe the toilet paper just out of the site. I guess the toilet seem too far away after dark. The solar hot water showers were a great idea. However, they only work when the sun has been out: unlike during my visit. The campground loop is poorly signed; more than once I drove into someone’s campsite instead of staying on the dirt road. Previously, campers and caravaners where given separate areas; we were between two caravans; luckily the generator on one side drowned out the Balkan music on the other. The pub sells beer and wine, and has powerpoints for recharging batteries, for an extra charge. The staff was helpful. Astronomy “tours” are available at night – a very cool idea in this part of the world.

4. The Seasons Lodge – Newman, Western Australia. One night. This series of former SMQ blocks has been a motel for over a decade. It’s largely occupied by short term contractors, based on the vehicles in the parking bays. Given its heritage the rooms are fairly spartan but adequate. They have been refurbished since my last stay here in 2003 (I found my name in the guest book). It’s within walkable distance of the Newman town centre shopping complex. The staff was great; of all the places I’ve stayed, they showed the most genuine interest in what I was doing in Australia. The brick walls between units were a bit thin; I was kept awake by the Wimbledon matches on the TV in the next room.

5. City Waters Lodge – Perth, Western Australia. Three nights. This is a basic self-catering motel – yet another block of converted flats – in downtown Perth. It’s basic, but convenient. Each unit has a basic, barely stocked kitchen and a small restroom. I’ve stayed here since 1986, so I’m fond of the place. The staff is friendly as always.

6. In Bush – the Red Centre, Northern Territory and the Pilbara, Western Australia. Eighteen nights (never enough). No rooms. Quiet except for occasional brumbies, camels, crickets, birds, frogs, cows, road trains, and iron mines, depending on location. Self-catering, all services available from rear of the truck. Toilet with a view. Rarely damp. Sublime at all times. Not close to any services, shopping, or other amenities. Any review of staff would be biased if not self-serving.

Twenty Three Hours at UKT NP

South from Kings Canyon, then west towards Uluru. From the folded and faulted rocks of the MacDonnell Ranges, we gradually descended to a typical Central Australian landscape – a flat largely plain covered with long linear red sand dunes. This isn’t barren by any means. The dunes seem to be largely stabilized, based on the abundance of trees and shrubs growing on and between them. The road made gentle cuts as we traversed west. Just enough change in relief to keep me awake while driving. The density of traffic increased for the first time. More passenger cars and tour buses. We passed signs that read” We Drive on the Right in Australia”.

Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park is a high profile tourist destination. Who hasn’t heard of Ayers Rock (Uluru)? Aussies have been braving the trip here since Gosse “discovered” it for Europeans in the 19th century. Aboriginals have of course lived in the area for tens of thousands of years. Anyway, the popularity of the site increased proportional to access. Paved roads appeared in the 1950s, and at some point Yulara was created. This community north of the park is hosts an airport, shopping mall, and all of the nearby accommodation – ranging from campground to five star resort. It’s clearly designed for tourists to fly in, spend a couple days hitting the attractions, and spend a lot of money. There were of course a fair number of travelers like us, who were making a loop from Alice. We also saw almost a dozen vehicles towing boats or carrying surf boards. These were people on long journeys – the nearest water was several hundred kilometers away, the nearest surf at least twice that.

Yulara was surreal. It reminded me of Disney World. It felt insulated from the raw outback we’d been in for the previous days. Everything was nicely laid out and well landscaped. The various accommodations blended into the surroundings. There were lights by all the trails. The campground had lots of grass to sleep on. The generator complex was thoughtfully placed near the campground. So much for a quiet night.

Once swags were rolled out, we headed further south to the Park per se. Uluru came clearly into view. It stunned me, this big blob of grooved red rock. It looked flat at first; my eyes took almost an hour to adjust and see it in relief. But then, there it was – steep sides, weathering stains, lots of large rounded cavities and a gently rounded top. Like Tnorala, I had no problem conceiving that it was a potent Aboriginal spiritual symbol.

We went to the sunset viewing area. This is literally a large parking lot on a prime rise north west of Uluru. It’s the only permitted spot within the park to stop and watch sunset. There’s a separate sunrise spot on the other side. We were an hour early; the lot was already half full. After finding a decent perspective, we waited. The lot filled up with every sort of vehicle and every kind of tourist. I think we were the grubbiest. The people to our left set up a table and had mixed drinks. I smelled either clove cigarettes or pot.

As the sun gradually set; the rock progressively glowed. It was hard to photograph with much color accuracy, but fun to try. It was lovely to watch the contrast on Uluru’s grooves increase, the shadows in its cavities darken. It was hard to both absorb the view and take pictures. I wondered if this view meant anything to the local Aboriginals. Almost dark. We left in a traffic jam of vehicles headed back to Yulara.

Kata Tjuta, or the Olgas, are a series of rounded rock domes similar in scale to Uluru, located about 50 kms to the west. The crowds at Uluru had turned all of us off, so in the morning we headed to Kata Tjuta to hike. Like Uluru, the area has much spiritual significance to the Aboriginals, so much of it is closed to visitors. I’d wanted to come here since reading about Kata Tjuta in my first Lonely Planet Guide to Australia (1985).

No worries. The Valley of the Winds trail looked interesting. It seemed more interesting than Uluru, if nothing If Uluru is a stunning blob of sandstone, then Kata Tjuta is its sensuous companion. Its domes are smaller, and composed of conglomerate. The much coarser grain size of this material gives them a mottled appearance. I tried to control my reflexive urge to identify clast types. I gave up when I reached double digits.

The trail meandered around and between domes. This is the sort of landscape that’s easy for me to get lost in. Not physically lost, but engulfed in looking at what’s around me. Many interesting rocks. What to photograph. Would the light improve? The day started cloudy, but got progressively clearer. Which lens to use (stayed with the mega zoom). Trying to feel the place for itself, not compare it to my other deserts.

We progressed slowly. Louis took initiative and went ahead while Paul and I took pictures. We were passed by tour groups; young guides, young tourists. Why was that German kid carrying a football?

Eventually, it seemed like enough walking. It was time to drive east, begin the run back to Alice. We covered maybe a third of the trail.

Twenty three hours – one sunset, one decent hike. A quick stop at the Aboriginal culture center: too full of tourists to absorb much. A final pause for fuel and a few bananas.

Like the rest of the Central Australia loop, I feel like I’ve largely seen the surface of things. I’d come back to Uluru and Kata Tjuta for sure. It’s possible to walk around the Uluru, that would be interesting. This is probably the best opportunity I’d have to see Aboriginal culture in context. More on this in a future post. Having seen the place once it would be easier to deal with the crowds. Most important would be the time to sit and just look at the rocks. Precious and present observation, so hard to achieve.

I write this in Perth. Paul is gone, off south with his girlfriend et al. Louis is on walkabout iso the Natural History Museum (I hope). We’re packed and ready to head to the Pilbara tomorrow. I’ll write while I’m up there, although the work and remoteness (off the tourist trail, lord be praised) will make posting slower.

Time to escape to Kings Park.

Kings Canyon – Walking the Rim

We drove the Mereenie Loop Road west and then south from Tnorala. This was a first long stretch of dirt track. It was sandy, rocky, and corrugated. I had to focus on both the track ahead, like normal driving, but also on the road immediately in front of me. Loose rocks and other perils are only visible at short distances. It’s also impossible to drive in a straight line on such a track. I had to constantly weave in search of the least bumpy and safest route. Fun, but intense and active driving. Not much traffic.

The Mereenie eventually returned to bitumen. Our next destination was Watarraka National Park, which featured the Kings Canyon locality; the rim walk there was recommended as one of the best walks in the Red Center.

But first, to swag out. The Kings Canyon Resort was full of clean people and felt too antiseptic after the first nights under the stars. We pushed on, hoping to find a track leading off into the bush. We found tracks with locked gates. I spied an ungated track and took it. It quickly dead ended on the margin of a sand dune. I turned the truck and stalled. Whoops. 2WD wouldn’t get us going, so 30 seconds of 4WD got us going. Good for Louis to learn how to lock the hubs.

Presently Kings Creek Station appeared. This may have originally been a working livestock ranch, but now it’s a campground with camel rides, helicopter tours of Kings Canyon, and other organized activities. It was time to camp. We put up with the constant drone of generators, an occasional helicopter and a runaway camel or two for access to running water (showers, ah) and electric light to cook by.

Kings Canyon is a more or less east-west trending gorge cut into a couple distinct formations of flat-lying Mesozoic sandstone. It looked similar to the rock of the MacDonnell Ranges, but is much younger; I think it’s at least partially debris shed from them during the Alice Springs Orogeny. Whatever its origin, the rocks for yet more layers of red strata.

Kings Canyon is abruptly truncated on the west by erosion. The Rim Walk thus began with a steep climb up several hundred stone steps. The ascent felt fine; all my time running and at the gym paid off. The upper sandstone formation is eroded into “beehive domes”. In essence, the sandstone beds originally fractured in a rectilinear pattern. The corners of these blocks have long since been eroded away. The resulting mounds – the beehives – are the result. That said, they’re really cool. Most of the beehives are three or four meters high. Their surfaces are defined by thin beds, which are cut by vertical fractures. The skin of the beehives is thus covered in a checkerboard pattern. The morning light picked out these textures nicely. The trail wandered through the domes for a couple of kilometers. Nice morning light; much to photograph. At one point I looked back on our trail; the tops of the beehives looked like a series of frozen waves.

We weren’t alone on the trail. We played tag up the steps with an older Aussie couple. The husband charmingly helped his wife over the rough parts. I think he’d told her it was an easy walk. More than once, I almost photographed a young couple who stopped and smooched on a regular basis. Paul and I took so many pictures that our progress was slow; we were overtaken by several tour groups: young Aussies, Japanese, maybe Germans. We eventually passed families with small children who were dragging towards the end of the walk. This population was typical for people we had met earlier in the MacDonnell Ranges. Everyone was typically gregarious and cheerful: a favorite Aussie trait.

The trail eventually came near the Kings Canyon rim. At its narrow western end, the beehives recede and the cliff became knife sharp. This was the Kings Canyon featured on postcards and travel posters. Well, it was dramatic, but small. Paul and I could not help but to compare it to similar canyons in Utah: deeper longer, sharper. I kept telling myself that this was Australia, and it was a spectacular landform compared to the rounded hills and flat plains that surround it. I was happy to sit and watch the light change. We eventually descended.

The road continued on towards Uluru.

Tnorala

On a second day of looking at gorges, gaps, and rocks...

The road eventually turned south, just in time for the sun to continue shining on me from the west. I guess I’ll return to North America with the usual asymmetric drivers tan.

A lookout turnoff appeared. At the base of a larger telecommunications mast I had my first look at the Gosse (or Gosse’s) Bluff impact structure. It was formed when something extraterrestrial – the guidebooks say a comet, although there is no positive evidence for this that I am aware of – hit this part of Australia about 143 million years ago. The hypervelocity impact was enough to make a crater that was 20+ kilometers in diameter. That structure has long since been eroded. What I was seeing from the lookout was its roots; the rocks that were deformed by the impact an estimated 2 kilometers below the surface. Today, these remnants form a range of hills more than 5 kilometers wide. From the lookout, it was clear why the early white explorer Giles called these bluffs. They form a series of sharply eroded, overlapping flat-topped hills that rise from Missionary Plain. A distinct contrast from the rolling spinifex hills on which we were standing.

We made a decent camp several hundred meters off an access road. Accessing what I don’t know, maybe better not to. A second night of frost and wondering why the hell swags are still made in Alice Springs. This camp was notable for its wildlife. I saw brumby tracks all throughout our campsite. Louis went walkabout and eventually spotted a pair of wild horses which looked about the right size to have made the tracks. They came to visit throughout the night. Paul suggested the fire either attracted or agitated them. It just might have been how we smelled too.

After the morning gear drying event, on to Gosse Bluff. I’d discovered we could visit this spot using Google Earth. Driving down the bumpy corrugated dirt road, I imagined viewing the truck on the access road from space. A different way of knowing where I was. I’m used to visualizing locations on maps, but placing myself on a satellite image so precisely felt strange. Almost like knowing too much information in advance.

Gosse Bluff is a circular ring of hills comprised of vertically dipping sedimentary strata. In English, this means the beds trend straight up and down. These rocks were flat-lying at the time of the impact. The massive overpressure of the event deformed them downwards, and they then sprang back, freezing vertically. Think of how a stretched rubber band moves; now imagine several kilometers of rock doing the same thing in the space of a few seconds. I sure can’t; but it’s the best scientific explanation for what’s happened.

The bluff is pierced by a stream on its east side; the access road enters here, stopping at a day use area in the center of the structure. Odd; impact features this size often have some kind of a central uplift. Not here; maybe it was eroded.

We parked and hiked around. I wanted to find shatter cones, which are a hand-scale feature formed in rocks by extraterrestrial impacts; they’re diagnostic of such. This was easy. A sandstone layer in the first bed we walked up to was full of them. They were defined by slightly radiating lines – microfractures – which cut across the layering in the sandstone. I’ll stick a picture in here somewhere. We did not see any cone apexes, but this shape was obvious.

We climbed up the side of on of the bluffs. I took the obvious wide angle and telephoto images. Paul shot video. Louis took pictures, climbed around and kept finding more shatter cones. He has a good eye.

Eventually I just sat. I was struck by how uncanny the bluffs looked. We’d seen plenty of tilted sedimentary rocks in the MacDonnell Ranges, folded by mountain building during the Alice Springs Orogeny. They were of course fractured and eroded, but these modifications occurred in a rational context. Tilting, folding, and erosion are comprehensible. Besides being vertical the Gosse Bluff rocks look – smashed. Fracturing is common in rocks, but here pervasive crushing had broken every layer into shards. The strata remained defined, but on close examination look like a splintered and reassembled sheet of glass. Maybe I was preconceiving this, but it was easy to infer that some catastrophic event had formed these features. However, confronted with the evidence, my mind could not comprehend what happened. I’ve read and studied impacts for a long time, but seeing an actual crater, I could not imagine what happened. The forces and time scale are too far out of my experience.

How would this have appeared to the Aboriginals who lived throughout this area? They would have astutely observed the difference in the rocks that I’ve written about. There’s no other structure like Gosse Bluff in Australia. In the local Western Arrente language Gosse Bluff is named Tnorala. Its mythic origin is in fact both cosmic and cataclysmic. According the interpretation of the NT Parks and Wildlife Service, “Tnorala was formed in the creation time, when a group of women danced across the sky in the Milky Way. During this dance, a mother put her baby aside, resting in its wooden baby carrier. The carrier toppled over the edge of the dancing area and crashed to the Earth, where it was transformed into the circular rock walls of Tnorala”.

I didn’t connect with this story when I first read it in California. Here, looking at the far wall of the bluff, it made more sense than trying to force my mind around an actual impact. This place is Tnorala in my mind from now onwards.

Alice and West

Alice Springs was the obvious place to start. It’s the only town of any size in the Red Centre of Australia. At 30,000 or so people, it has all the necessary services: airport, truck rental, and stores (food, field guides, souvenirs). It’s a real town that largely caters to tourism. I thought that it would be a good place to get over jet lag.

Given the distortions of my body clock, my impressions of Alice are hazy. It’s tucked just north of the west-east trending strike ridges of the MacDonnell Ranges. The airport is south of the hills; we arrived in Alice per se through the dramatic piercement of Heavitree Gap, which is just wide enough for the two lane road, the Adelaide-Darwin railway, and the Todd River. The MacDonnells rise a thousand feet or so above the town. The sedimentary cliffs should have been pretty, but jet lag tunnel vision and lack of local orientation kept me focused where I was going and what’s immediately around me.

Reorientation to Australia. Look right, then left when crossing roads. Walk on the left side of the footpaths and sidewalks. Drive on the left; be very aware when entering roundabouts. It was comforting to shop for food and supplies at Woolworths; I’ve been in equivalent stores all over Australia. I know what brands I like. Finally, someplace where I knew where I was.

The influence of tourism on Alice is obvious. The downtown core has a high density of aboriginal art galleries, many of which sell very powerful original works. Paul did his part to support the Australian economy here. The pedestrian mall features a number of tour agencies and internet cafes. There are also the standard curio shops selling the same Australiana souvenirs that I’ve seen in Perth, the Pilbara, Sydney, Hobart, etc. The gradient of young backpackers increases to the west towards the youth hostel. I’ve heard French, German, Japanese, and possibly Russian being spoken.

We picked up a Nissan Patrol 4WD on Monday. It’s a decent vehicle, a little mushy in the suspension and steering, and the shift gates are a tad fussy. A wider wheel base than the Toyota FJ 100s I am used to. The hire company also provided gear; cook kit, table and chair, and swags. We filled the remaining space with food, gear, and water bottles.

Before setting out, we spent a half day at the Alice Springs Desert Park. It’s a sort of combination botanical garden and zoo. It does a superb job of presenting the major ecological zones of Central Australia within a walkable setting. I wish I had been less jet laggy, I would have absorbed more. The biological context is just different enough from the Pilbara that there was much to see and learn. I pretty much failed. Nonetheless, it was rewarding to wander through a series of small aviaries and see a wide variety of birds, to get a feel for the local species of spinifex (softer) and wildflowers (similar). The nocturnal house featured a colony of bilbys; these are sort of a rabbit-like marsupial that’s almost extinct (due to feral cats). The only odd part was a recurrent sense that this was a created landscape. I don’t know when the Park was opened, but the majority of the vegetation zones had to be installed; all the plants thus were about the same size. It lacked the range of young to old plants that occur in a native landscape, and it was not established enough to look “real”.

On Tuesday we headed west from Alice into West MacDonnell Range National Park. Our route followed a major valley between a couple major ridges of resistant sandstone. For some reason the road is called Larapinta Drive. This amused me, I think of a “drive” as having houses on it. Here it really was a drive, a route to new and interesting places. The main NP attractions are the stream valleys which have cut north through the Ranges, cutting narrow and scenic gorges. We stopped at several of these: Simpson Gap, Standley Chasm, Ormiston Gorge. They were each dramatic in different ways, ranging from the narrow notches at Standley to an outright canyon at Ormiston. Each stop was at most a few hours hike. Time to take pictures and learn a field protocol for fussing with all my camera gear. Also reflexive geology; observing the rocks to understand their sedimentological and deformational history. More orientation.

A first night’s bush camp; a chance for Louis to get oriented to how we do things. First, find the right off road spot. Make sure the truck is parked safely. Collect wood for fire, dig fire pit. Choose swag out spots and lay out gear. Assemble table, cook gear, and chairs. Enjoy happy hour while some one cooks.

A clear night, lovely to be back under the stars. Very cold, to be expected in the desert. I woke up to make use of a nearby bush, and discovered that my swag and gear were covered with frost. In the morning we all discovered that swags aren’t the best cold weather gear. While they kept the frost on the outside, their canvas sides also trapped much moisture inside. My sleeping bag verged on wet. The pad under me was damp. We had a leisurely breakfast while the sun dried everything out.

Alice Springs: Three Tubes Later

6/8/09 6:48 am, Alice Springs

My trip began on BART. My sweetheart dropped me off at the Lafayette station after a long, hard week of preparations. I was feeling pretty ready last week, but then a severe allergy attack and an onerous mental health grant at work interfered. I thus arrived on tube number one with my two bags, a brick of a carryon full of electronics, and a vast selection of anti-allergy pills and tissues. Hard to say an affectionate good bye when one is full of snot and dizzy. Hearts were present.

Paul joined me a few stations down the track. We compared our latest gadgets on the hour long ride to SFO. By counting camera lenses I have the quantitative edge. Nice day to leave home, a beautiful early Bay Area evening – I’m always sad and excited as the tube progresses through the same series of stations – Rockridge, West Oakland, City Center, Daly City, San Bruno, and finally SFO, where tube number two awaited.

Into the SFO international terminal, Louis was already waiting for us at Qantas. Check-in had commenced, but I still managed an exit row middle seat. Dinner, boarding at bedtime. I lugged by wad of electronics down the aisle and plopped onto Seat 58B: near the back of the tube.

Late departure, something fussy in the cockpit. Long slow takeoff roll, then over the Pacific. I thought, good, there must be enough jet fuel on board. Eat, sleep, watch movies, stretch, take drugs, drink fluids, talk to row mates. They were both Aussies returning home. Intelligent but necessarily insular views of the US. Typically curious about me and my opinions about Australia. Neither of them had been to the Pilbara: no surprise there. Leg room good.

The tube was an aging 747-400. This turned into a plus as my right hand row mate’s entertainment system failed to function. As compensation, the steward brought her a duty-free bottle of champagne (Charles Krug), and gave all three of us first class toilet kits, express customs passes, and energy drinks before landing.

Sydney at 6:20 am, about on time. Pre-dawn. Express customs was handy, although my rock hammer proved of interest for the first time ever. We stumbled to the domestic terminal, in search of tube number three.

A mocha and a doughnut later, we boarded a 737-800 to Alice Springs. I chose a window seat. I entered the jet lag zone. The adrenalin of landing in Australia and passing customs had faded. I forced myself to stay awake and watch the new and unknown landscapes pass under the plane. Lots and lots of red linear sand dunes, punctuated by dry lakes. Must have been horrible country on foot or horseback for the 19th century explorers, although the aboriginals thrived there for tens of thousands of years. I’m sure the current Murray River Basin drought made the land redder and drier than normal.

My travel karma continued. I had requested vegetarian meals when I made my Qantas booking. When handing out lunch, the flight attendant said, that’s a small sandwich for such a big guy, have another.

Onto the tarmac at Alice Springs just after midday. I am done with long aluminum tubes for a while. Or at least for a week. I’m looking forward to getting the truck and going into the country tomorrow.

Yesterday before dinner, in an effort to stay awake, went to aboriginal art galleries. Paul was game to purchase some new pieces. He’s thorough so I had time to look at many works in detail. Through the jet lag, saw a broader range of painting than I’ve seen in earlier years. The gallery staff was glad to chat, so I learned a couple interesting things. First, the art movement burgeoned here in Central Australia because it was about the last part of the country where Aboriginals were contacted and culturally influenced by whites, that is, they were less screwed over and disacculturated. Some of the first missionaries hooked them up with painting, and the art movement took off. This seems to explain the lack of art in the Pilbara; most of the natives there were disturbed many decades ago (I think). We saw some powerful works by a guy about my age who came out of the bush after meeting his first white man in 1984. Amazing; this was only one year before my first trip to Australia.. Second, contemporary aboriginal art is getting more colorful and abstract, instead of earth-hued and pointillistic. Also less overtly Dreamtime-related. Most of this is change is driven by women; the men seem to stick to traditional methods so far. Not sure why this is so. I’ll see what else I can learn.