The First Place: Purnululu Part 1

6/24: Woke up feeling strangely normal in Kununurra. Maybe it was my meal of barramundi the previous night, plus just enough travel to be on some semblance of a normal sleep cycle. A wait at the airport produced our 4WD: a Mitsubishi Pajero. Downtown Kununurra provided food, ice, drinks, and other random supplies, and we were off south on Rt. 95 towards Purnululu National Park.

This is the first time I’ve driven a Pajero. It’s not a field vehicle like the Land Cruisers that I idolize, but a good, practical SUV with a big diesel, a gear ratio decent for highway and unsealed roads, and carpet. Not sure about the carpet, but we’re making do: glad I don’t have to clean it.

As I wrote earlier, Purnululu is the official name for the Bungle Bungle Range, or the Bungle Bungle. This is broad plateau of Paleozoic sandstone, shaped like a very fat “U”. It’s a national park, and a World Heritage site, for its remarkable erosional patterns. More on that later. No one seems to know where the name “Bungle Bungle” came from. There are several competing whimsical hypotheses, involving ranchers, aboriginals, and a variety of miscommunications. None of them are that compelling. I just like being someplace called the Bungle Bungle.
My guidebook stated a five hour drive from Kununurra: east on Rt. 1, the Victoria Highway, and south on Rt 95. The Pajero seemed happy, stable and safe at 120 kph. I enjoyed this initial run through new territory. The landscape of the East Kimberley seemed is a series of fault controlled linear hills and mountains, separated by valleys of various widths and lengths. A lot of the bedrock looked like highly deformed sediments, with occasional interruptions of granite or other crystalline rock. This terrain was covered by a variety of bush grasses, sprinkled with low density of somewhat familiar acacias and other trees that I don’t know. A startling addition to this biota were frequent boab trees. These are the same as the baobabs of Africa; my plant books states that the first boabs arrived from shipwrecks on the Kimberley coast. Boabs have fat grey elephantine trunks, all out of proportion to “normal trees”. This barrel is topped by an often symmetrical fan of branches. Some of the boabs we passed were leafy, some just bare branches, while a few had what looked like fruit. I haven’t a clue what this variety was about. The boabs made me smile; they were a sure sign of being in a new place.

As we drove along, I kept thinking, something looks different here. After enough gazing, I think this is due to the absence of bush-sized plants. A wide variety of bushes are a part of my Australian desert biota model from my time in the Pilbara and the Red Centre. Here, it’s the trees and grasses. This gives the landscape a park-like feel, especially in areas of recent burn.

After 245 kilometers, we reached the eastward turn-off to the Bungle Bungles. Bitumen ended; the washboard dirt road began. This fifty-three kilometers was supposed to take us two hours. It was 3:45 pm; ninety minutes to sunset. The track wound across hills and through many watercourses. The Pajero was no longer white. I drove rapidly well within safe limits; I was glad the sunset was behind us. We reached the park visitor center in eighty five minutes. It was closed. We went to the nearest campground, and groped around in the dark for enough space to camp. I was asleep by 8:15.

6/25: I was awake before dawn, at 5 am. The Bungle Bungle is at about 17oS; definitely subtropical. In spite of this, I’d read that since it was winter, it should be cold a night. I guess cold is a relative thing; according to the Pajero’s digital thermometer, the low was 15oC – around 60oF. No worries, I was happy to be up before the sun wearing only shorts and a shirt. I wandered away from camp, eventually climbing a nearby limestone ridge: smeared and discontinuous beds; clearly a fault zone. The Bungle Bungle massif was beginning to glow red in the morning light. On this, its west side, the Range is a steep north-south trending cliff, pierced by a number of narrow gorges or chasms, as they call them up here. I stood and watched this brighten in the increasing light. The Bungle Bungles is largely flat-laying sedimentary rocks; the coarsest scale of this bedding gave the range a striped appearance. I knew we’d be heading there to hike soon.

I wandered back to the campground. It’s appeal was limited to being the only legal place to stay on the west side of the park. Other than that, it was dusty and crowded with 4WDs and campers. A little too promiscuous, not the kind of camping that Paul and I prefer. As I walked back into camp, Paul stuck his head out of this tent, and shared his first brainwave of the day – let’s get out of here and eat breakfast at the trailhead. We were on the road by 6:15.

Fourteen kilometers of dirt road was followed by a quiet breakfast at Mini Palm Gorge and a pair of hikes: Mini Palm Gorge and Echidna Chasm. These walks, maybe a total of eight kilometers, wandered into a couple of the narrow canyons that knife into the west side of the range. These chasms follow major structural joints – vertical planes of weakness – in the bedrock.

As we headed out on the first hike, I felt strangely disoriented; how did I suddenly come to be walking along this hot sandy track in Western Australia? It was a particularly fast evolution this time; maybe being tired in advance contributed to this.

Well, I was here, healthy and awake, so I walked to see what the Bungle Bungle was really like. The hike into Mini Palm Gorge gently ascended into a blind canyon full of Livionsia palm trees; a species endemic to this area. It wasn’t clear which palms were dwarfs; there was enough evidence of flash floods that I wondered if the smaller ones weren’t just younger. Although it was 8 am, it was already hot and I was sweating. We turned a corner into the gorge per se; deep shadows and a breeze greeted us. The hike immediately seemed more tolerable. The trail climbed over and under large boulders of conglomerate, eventually ending above a grove of the maybe mini palms, in a blind canyon. It was totally quiet, except for the sound of birds and my heartbeat. The vertical walls of the gorge glowed red a the top. I thought, this is a good start.

Echidna Chasm proved this to be the case. This canyon, while an easy walk, pinched down until it was little more than hip wide, albeit 600 feet high. We passed under several large chockstones; boulders that had been trapped in their fall by the narrowing chasm. I hoped they were stable, at least for the rest of our hike. Like Mini Palm, the trail ended in a blind canyon; in this case defined by a waterfall chute fifty feet above the trail’s end. This would not be a good place to be in the wet. The chasm widened out a bit here, and many of our fellow hikers gathered here for a rest in the relatively cool shade. Most of the people were encountered were pensioners who were exploring the remoter parts of AustraliaThey were inevitably fun to talk to; for some reason most of them thought we were Canadian. . However, I was particularly struck by one family on holiday from Perth. They had three young boys, under ten at the oldest. Not only had they got them this far and up Echidna Chasm, but the eldest son was clearly mentally challenged. The father carried him the whole way, while patiently answering the middle son’s questions about spiders.

A quick stroll down the trail, and time for lunch. Geez, it was hotter. Riding in the truck with the AC on full seemed a good idea, so we went to the visitors centre for, in order: cold drinks, an excellent guide to Bungle Bungle geology, and reservations for a helicopter ride on Sunday. After sunset (talking to more pensioners, seeing the family again) it was time for dinner and sleep.

Field Food Failure

Field work can create many kinds of failure. Most crucial to the research, in the case of my work on spherule layers, has been an inability to find outcrops of the target strata. This is usually a matter of poor exposure. It’s hard to find a thin layer of tiny round particles in a rubbly hillside, especially when one is not sure where it’s supposed to be. There are sometimes other extenuating circumstances, such as the troop of angry baboons I encountered once in South Africa, but these are rarer. My personal research shortcoming is failing to take copious notes or photographs. It all seems so obvious when I’m looking at the rocks.

Other field failures are the common malfunctions of travel: missed connections, lost luggage, or faulty reservations. I’d add three Outback Australia-specific hazards to this list. First, flat tyres. Our trucks have had a range of brand new to badly worn tyres, sometimes both on the same vehicle. Regardless of condition, I have gotten two or three flats on every trip. This is mostly inconvenient; we always carry two spares, and tyre repair is easy at the mining towns. Crawling under a 1.5 ton vehicle on a dusty road to place a tiny jack on the axle is a bit dicey. This is what field assistants are for. Second, getting stuck. I’ve only gotten the truck bogged – in mud – once. That was enough. Escape was a 40 hour project. Finally, road kill. Kangaroos often graze by road verges at dawn and dusk. When they are startled by the truck there’s an even chance they’ll jump in front of the vehicle rather than into the bush. Our expeditions have hit an average of one animal per trip. It’s hard to avoid an animal leaping in front of your truck when it’s going 80 kph. I’m glad that cattle, the other main road kill opportunity, tend to graze during the day. It’s easy to slow down when approaching them.

While I know this inventory of recurrent failures very well, Australia Fourteen served up my first food failure. When Bruce and I first worked together in 1982, he quickly discovered that I liked to cook. This was good: he can’t. I’ve been in charge of the kitchen on every subsequent research trip. This has suited us both very well. Bruce likes my meals, and I enjoy both the cooking as well as control over this domestic part of field work.

On Australia One, I developed a series of field recipes, which I’ve refined over subsequent years. Chernobyl Potatoes is one of these. Another is pan-baked, baking soda-raised bread. I’ve always tried to include a meal or two that features cornbread, dessert bread, or a savory wheat bread.

Louis and I purchased a set of pots in Perth. This has been protocol for many field seasons; to buy cheap, basic equipment which we can use and wear out, to be abandoned in the appropriate refuse or recycling bin at the trip’s end. The set we found was thin metal, but seemed sufficient for two weeks. The non-stick coating on the frying pan was a plus.

I bought staples for bread in Newman. Eventually, a night occurred when I was cooking, and had enough time to make a batter – cornbread this time. To compensate for the hot gas flame, I have always added extra oil to the mix. I heated the pan, and made a small test cake. It stuck a little bit, but came out satisfactorily. I put more butter in the pan, and poured in enough batter to form a layer about half an inch thick throughout the pan: standard procedure. I watched the cooking mass closely. I knew from previous dinners that I needed to constantly move the pan over the flame so that the bread cooked evenly and did not burn. Presently the bread seemed ready to flip. It held together at the edges, and tested to be cooked three-quarters through. I pried up one edge using a knife, and slid my spatula under the bread. It stopped. Crap. In spite of all the oil and butter, it was burned firmly onto the pan. I pried it loose. It broke into many pieces, and was burning rather than cooking. The damn frying pan was just too thin.

I tossed this first failure away. I modified the batter, making it drier. The same thing happened; a burned crust, a raw interior. I got increasingly annoyed. Eventually, it was clear that my efforts were futile. I gave up and made rice. I burned the partially cooked bread in the camp fire, and we disposed of the rest the next day in a rubbish bin. I’ve made dinners in the past that were a bit too spicy, but never have I had to abandon a meal plan. I should have bought a better frying pan.

The frying pan became increasingly difficult to use. Vigorous cleaning progressively removed the non-stick coating. Our meals became slightly greasier to compensate. I became annoyed at the pan for being so useless and at myself for buying such a cheap piece of equipment.

I decided to achieve retribution at our final swag out. After the final field dinner, I took the frying pan away from camp, and tried to crush it with large rocks, dropped from chest height. This was unsatisfying; the rocks were too small, and the ground was soft and absorbed too much of the impact. So I got my rock hammer and punched the pan full of holes. I felt much better.

We recycled the cook set in Newman.

The Second Week in the Pilbara

25th June – The rain continued intermittently through the night. I woke up around 3 am and saw faint stars. I hoped the weather was changing. The blue plastic tarp that I was using to cover my swag was definitely waterproof. No rain got in, but none of my respiration or perspiration got out. My bivy and sleeping bags were wet. Oh well, I was still warm enough.

At 5:30 I was ready to worm my way out into the cool morning. The sky was clear. My damp gear would dry. I walked down a track from camp. I hadn’t seen Pilbara bush that was this wet before. The desert pavement was almost black. The puddles of mud were bright orange-red. The flora glistened; there were droplets on many branches, twigs and leaves. It was strange to see so much water in this semiarid place. As the sun rose, ground fog began to fill the lows. Mt. Nameless turned orange as first sunlight struck it. I hoped that the outcrops would be dry.

We drove to Tom Price and met Jim Gordon, who’s one of the chief exploration geologists for the Rio Tinto TP operation. We’d been in email contact about accessing a section that was technically on the mine site. We met Jim at the TP Shell station near town. Accessing the mine site required acquisition of visitor IDs, a safety induction session, and an escort. It was no dramas. Jim seemed happy to be our minder. The section was on Mt. Reeder-Nichols (whoever this was). I’ve worked there before. We drove up a muddy track, parked by the mine water tanks, and parked.

Jim was immediately curious about the rocks. The climb up the usual steep rubbly spinifex-covered slope was slow, as we talked the whole way about stratigraphy, Hamersley Basin geology, mining geology, life in Tom Price, and all the other facets of conversation with geological kin. It was a blast. I rarely meet anyone who knows the rocks and is interested in the stories they tell. He’d been a lot of places I haven’t and vice versa. I got to be a geologist with another geologist.

The measurements were quick. The spherule layer was simple here; ripples (maybe tsunamigenic) and some overlying argillite and carbonate. Samples taken, we headed to the mess hall for lunch. I’d been promising Louis an endless feast. He got it. I ate lots of vegetables. Jim and I talked and shared info for another couple hours. A nice break and intellectual airing from the norm of field work.

The mess hall closed. Time to head back into the field. I secured a pass to drive on the Pilbara Rail access road: a time saving shortcut and a nicer drive, in terms of scenery. We drove to north to Hamersley Station. This is one of the earliest cattle stations in the Pilbara. It’s still a working station: however, helicopters, utes, and quad bikes have replaced horses when it’s mustering time. Permission to work on station land secured, I drove the Cruiser across the station airstrip, in search of the track heading west through the Serpentine Creek drainage.

It was easy to find. Rio Tinto is doing a lot of iron ore drilling in the area. The road had been refurbished. The speed limit sign read 60 kph. I thought to myself: this is too easy. The track kept going. It wasn’t even muddy. 50 kilometers rolled by. The sun began to set; hard to drive directly into it. Dangerous on dirt too. 80 kilometers. We wanted to camp early; tonight was Chernobyl potato night. We needed a lot of coals in the fire.

95 kilometers. A track turned off to the south. I took it. It ended in a turnaround about a kilometer off the road, just north of the Serpentine Creek drainage. There were palm trees beyond the turnaround and – a large pool. Wow. That explained the palm trees. I figured it must be a spring from the cave system that likely underlies the valley. A sampling pipe at the edge of the pool was labeled “Palm Spring”.

There was a lot of dead wood from past bush fires and floods. Coals achieved, we roasted potatoes, onions, apples, and carrots. Bruce labeled this the Chernobyl process years ago as the one potato that gets lost ends up as a carbon ball with a core of baked potato. Haw. A clear night.


June 26th – A dew-rich morning near the spring, well worth it for the light on the cliffs to the north. It’s such a joy to wake up in the Pilbara. The light is always red and beautiful someplace.

I had two research targets for the day. We’d camped near the first: Mt. Farquhar. A short drive, then a long walk across minor drainages and spinifex, followed. The usual climb up steep slopes and stumbles on loose rubble. The commute was made more anxious by an abundance of large spider webs hosting very big spiders. Hard to see them; I jumped spastically when intersecting one, usually face first. I’ve never liked the feeling of spider webs. In addition, almost every spider here is toxic in some way. No need to find out if these bugs were on the list. After the climb and much searching, the spherule layer appeared. It was thin, and poorly exposed. I had forgotten my hammer. Crap. I sent Louis back to get it and fetch some lunch. I found some decent outcrops. The now familiar process commenced: measure, sample, photograph, and scoot.

Target number two was Mt. Delphine. This isolated peak at the western end of the Serpentine Creek drainage has intrigued me since I first sorted it out on the geologic map in 1992. The section looked promising. My Google Earth reconnaissance was enticing.

Bruce has always been dubious about Mt. Delphine; he rightly pointed out that it’s a long drive to a site of unknown quality; we know the spherule layer does thin to the west. I wanted to go look at it, driven by both curiosity and hope. This was the time. Ninety minutes of driving on progressively degrading roads brought us to the base of Delphine. Park, assemble gear, climb. Hmm, the Paraburdoo Member was pretty deformed. Not a good sign. We climbed. The rocks showed more folding than usual. They were also cleaved, showing a regular fracture pattern caused by deformation. Another troubling sign. It also made smaller pieces of rubble underfoot: more slippery. A place to fall on spinifex for sure.

We scoured the available outcrop. Louis and I both picked the same bed as the impact layer, but could not find any spherules in it. Damn. We climbed most of the way up Delphine as compensation, and watched a wedge-tailed eagle soar.

Driving back east in search of a swag out spot, I thought that Bruce and I were both right about Mt. Delphine. He was right; the spherule layer exposure was cryptic at best, and probably not worth the time and effort to get there. But I was happy to have looked. My inquisitiveness - scientific and personal - was satisfied. My sense of place was expanded; another hill visited. New vistas seen. Now I want to go west and south from Delphine. It would be a cool loop down to the Paraburdoo access road through some neat rocks and the spherule layer might be there...

June 27th – Time for a break. Jim had told us about a tiger eye locality near Hamersley Station. This semiprecious gemstone forms when quartz and a couple minor minerals replace some of the asbestos minerals in iron formation. Toxic, like at Wittenoom. We fond the locality. There were asbestos warning signs on the entry road. Clearly, a lot of geologists and rockhounds had been here already. The informal parking area was well defined. The original mine, more of an odd little quarry, had been picked over pretty well. Many of the large pieces of waste rock had been bashed on. I gave Louis my hammer (his remains somewhere on Mt. Reeder-Nichols). He had a good go at the rocks and found some decent tiger-eye.

The real break was Karijini National Park. I’ve written about this in previous years. In a nutshell, a number of streams have cut very narrow and deep gorges through the iron formation. In the local Aboriginal mythology, the gorges are the trails left through the rock by large snakes. There are streams and pools in most gorges. Good hiking, swimming and photography. I’d been here enough times that I had sites in mind where I thought I could compose good images.

Two hundred and forty kilometers later, we reached the Park boundary. I was done in. A long way on dirt. After a stop at Hamersley Gorge, we checked into the Eco Retreat campground on the west side of the park. This used to be a Park campground; it’s now run by an Aboriginal corporation. I’ll review the campground in another post. For now, it gets 8 out of 15. The abrupt change from being with one other person out to the west, with no one else around to a campground was awful. I hated the noise of generators, music, and just the sight of so many people. It took me out of the sacred of the Pilbara and back into a human reality. I did not need this yet. I slept, somehow.


June 28th – At least the sick baby across the track did not keep me up. Time to play. I made my first descent into Hancock Gorge: steep, narrow, and wet. I took multiple exposures of the same scene: definitely a place to see if the HDR function in Photoshop really works. Louis did what seemed like a lot of risky bouldering. I was worried, and then he told me he teaches rock climbing. I worried less. Hancock is a place to come back to: the full trek requires warmer weather, a wet suit, ropes, and inner tubes. Sign me up.

More gorges. A tragedy; my Nikon lens committed suicide, via the truck hood, a slamming door, and my right shin. I almost caught it, I swear, but it’s nonrepairable. Crap. After a minute of agony, I realized that it was a done deal. Attachment wouldn’t change the scenario. I felt relieved. Not due to detachment, but because suddenly the burden of taking pictures was lifted. I’d shot a lot in the morning and been trying too hard. This was holiday, right? Now I could fool around with just my ultrawide zoom. Joffre Gorge, Knox Gorge, and then time to head east to the Visitors Centre.


June 29th – see my earlier post, Pools, A Roo, Spherules


June 30th

Morning Chores List:

1. Drive to Newman
2. Fill Cruiser with diesel
3. Go on BHP Billiton Mine Tour (Louis)
4. Scott, while Louis is on tour:
a. buy boxes and packing material for mailing rocks
b. get back door of truck fixed
c. chat up CoreFleet (truck rental agency)
d. finally have a good cup of coffee (Macchiato)
e. pack rocks
f. mail rocks
g. resupply with food and ice
h. fuss with gear
i. pick up Louis

Afternoon Chores List:

1. drive back to the new spherule layer site
2. find more exposures
3. sample the limestone above and below the layer
4. drive back to the east of Newman
5. camp someplace near the Jimbelbar mine; a second post-twilight camp
6. sleep


July 1st – A final night in bush. I’d hoped it would be someplace scenic if not special. However, the run back the new layer forced a camp after dark off the Newman-Port Hedland road. At least it was warm and dry – no dew in. After the moon set, the Milky Way was fantastic. I said farewell to the Magellanic Clouds and the Southern Cross for another year or two. I watched the sunrise on my morning walk. It was especially good. The full spectrum of visible light crossed the sky. High and low altitude cloud layers added to the drama.

On this last field day, I wanted to look at the easternmost exposure of the Wittenoom spherule layer. It’s on a BHP leasehold. I’d arranged another round of induction with a mine supervisor in order to get site access. After some pitching around, I read my notes correctly and arrived at the right remote gate: Orebody 18. I rang the buzzer as instructed. My contact had gone on long service leave. He didn’t tell anyone about my visit. They were all in meetings. They wanted me to refax my site access request form. Hello, the nearest fax was in Newman 40 kilometers away. Stonewalled. My cell phone had service. I left my number. We sat by the gate for 2 hours. A grader, a new Haulpak, and a water truck drove by. No response. I took it as a sign.

We went to Newman, checked into hotel, and started the clean up process. This took much of the day. In the evening. Fish and chips rarely tasted better.


July 2nd – Up at 5 am. Hard to see the sunrise over the houses of Newman. To the airport. South to Perth. A successful field season.

The First Week in the Pilbara

18th June – Up at 4:30, out of the Mounts Bay Road Lodge after three nights in Perth. A 2 hour QantasLink flight to Newman: one of the three major iron ore mining towns in the Pilbara. After a bit of a wait due to crossed emails, CoreFleet arrived with our Toyota Landcruiser. It lacked spare tyres. Whoops. Off to the CoreFleet motor pool, where a rather embarrassed mecho put a pair of extras on the vehicle. Back to “downtown” Newman, iso a week’s worth a food, camping supplies, and most importantly, a key multi-use tool: the shovel. A Chicken Treat lunch, a gear sort on the footie oval, and off we went into the field.

My first site was the Weeli Wolli Creek area. Bruce and I were first there in 1985: we tried to access the same area in 2007, but the road we’d used to get to the area of interest was almost fully overgrown. I kind of knew where it was, and worried that we would not be able to find it. The dirt road weaved past the Rhodes Ridge exploration camp; a relic from the 1960s. We crossed Weeli Wolli Creek for about the eighth time, and came to the area of the track. There it was; fresh tyre tracks indicated recent use. After a rough bounce, we arrived right at the section I wanted to look at.

First swag out in the Pilbara. Rocky ground; blocky chert talus from the hills I wanted to work on. Sundown, and the stars appeared. Oh, to be able to see this full sky of stars for more than a couple weeks per year. A joy to see the Southern Cross, Scorpio, the Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds. Chilly, not too cold.


19th June – Up at 6, time to photograph the sunrise. My numb fingers fussed with the tripod and other gear, but I was in plenty of time to make some good exposures. Shoot and learn. My usual breakfast: fruit, more fruit, soy milk, peanuts, a bit of muesli.

Up the hill to the impact layer. Wow, not what I’d expected from a quick look the day before. A thick spherule zone at the base, overlain by a good meter of mass flow (underwater landslide) deposits. Time to start training Louis. Here is how to take my dictation. No, don’t wind up the tape between every section, it wastes time. Please keep me honest when I confuse planar laminations and parallel laminations.

Descending the hill after measurement. I always forget that Hamersley Range hillsides are bloody steep and rubbly. It would be too easy to take a dive off ledge, courtesy of the wrong chunk of loose rock, and fall three or four meters. And probably land in spinifex. I never forget how spiny this grass feels when it sticks me in the hands, legs, knees and butt. I’d never climb a hill like this at home; I guess I’ll do anything for rocks. I look for wallaby trails, they pick the good lines.

The view is worth the treachery of steepness and poky plants. The Weeli Wolli drainage forms a broad valley, punctuated by small buttes of dolomite and the winding course of the stream, outlined by white gum trees.


20th June. I wanted to take Louis to Weeli Wolli Spring, one of the few places in the Pilbara with consistent surface water. It’s about eighteen kilometers north from yesterday’s work area. More dirt road. I like being back in a Landcruiser. It has a tighter suspension than the Nissan we had in the NT. It’s geared lower, and the engine seems to have more juice. A better field vehicle. More fun to drive.

I have also been meaning to comment; this truck, the NT Nissan, every other field truck I’ve had in Aus, and all the mine vehicles have tyres with a narrow tread width. The Cruiser’s are 235s. This is a stark contrast to standard SUV tires in the US, which are much wider. I wonder why – practicality of use vs. appearance? There’s plenty of dirt, mud, rock, and so forth to drive across here, much tougher than asphalt in any country.

We camped at Weeli Wolli Spring last night, by the water. The natural flow has been subsumed by groundwater pumped out the Hope Downs mine; the stream literally roared just a few meters from the campsite. Its good for flowers; I see a new type of creeping violet. It’s not in my plant book.

In the morning, a brief walk along the drainage, above the mine water input. Scattered pools appeared amidst the rubble of the otherwise dry drainage. Weeli Wolli is home to lots of kajput paper bark gum trees. Like most eucalypts, this tree sheds its bark, but instead of coming loose in sheets, it peels away in delicate, paper like layers. They’re white, and look perfect for writing till you touch them and they dissolve. I take some close-ups of peeling bark. My eye is also attracted by the abundant flood debris – from last summer’s cyclone? The broken ruptured shapes of small trees and shrubs wrapped around larger trunks cheers me up. I’m not sure why.

Later in the day, a second work site, at an undisclosed location. See my earlier blog.


21st June. A cold swag out, enhanced by some star track photography. I somehow managed to get the south astronomical pole in just the right place. Good dawn photography on the hill.

Today was ninja day. I knew exactly where I wanted to work, but getting there required either crossing a mine lease without permission or taking an unused road in Karijini National Park. We headed up Route 95. The mine lease road turned off to the left. I equivocated. Intuition said keep going; don’t risk the wrath of Rio Tinto or their surrogates. Another hour in the truck, into Karijini. The park road I wanted to take went past the ranger HQ. I figured what the heck. As we drove in, a ranger was driving out. We waved to each other. I kept going.

Another track in excellent condition. This was formerly the main drag from the Wittenoom-Roy Hill Road through to Newman. It passed several stations and mining camps; Juna Downs, Packsaddle, Rhodes Ridge. We used it extensively before the sealed Rt. 95 came into existence. Again, a track in great shape. I kept expecting washouts, trees growing in the road, or some other hazard. But the track was great. I’d given Louis responsibility for keeping track of our progress on topo and geologic maps. He slowly gets the hang of it.

The road turned east. On our left, a promising section appeared. We parked off the road, geared up, and climbed another hill. After some casting around, I found spherules at the base of a three meter bed. Wow, very thick! Usually it’s about a tenth of this. A cool variation; much of the thickness came from a massive, very muddy bed, probably the settle out of a cloud of mud on the sea floor.

I was happy. We’d snuck into the section, and it was a good one. The work finished, we headed back up the Juna Downs road. I made Louis practice driving a manual transmission. He did fine. Just past the ranger station, the pieces of a wrecked airplane were laid out by the side of the road. It must have crashed and burned nearby, and been reassembled as such here. The light was good; I backed up to take a picture. As we got out the truck, a familiar hiss sounded. Crap, the left rear tyre was going flat. I taught Louis how to change a truck tyre. He did fine. Unfortunately, the spot where we had to change the tyre was about the dustiest area of the road. We were both coated in red dust by the time the new tyre was on.


22nd June - The combination of a flat tyre and personal red dust layering dictated a night at the Auski Tourist Village. Sigh, I’m glad that Auski exists; showers, a mechanic, and clean campground and facilities are nice luxuries. But it’s not the same as camping in bush, with no one around. Auski is also a stop for road trains en route to Newman or Port Hedland. So it’s noisy, bright, and loud. I wasn’t ready for civilization yet. But the shower felt really good.

In the morning, after the tyre was declared healthy, I pointed the Cruiser east towards Roy Hill. I wanted to go to the eastern edge of the outcrop area, where I hoped we could find the impact layer before it dived below the surface of the Fortescue River Valley.

Into the morning sun. A broad, dusty road, fairly dusty, but virtually no traffic. Again, I had a destination in mind: Koodaideri. I have no clue where this name came from; it could be Aboriginal, or butchered English of some sort. Bruce and I were last here in 1986. We drove as far as I could stand it before turning south to the hills. Another quick walk up a steep, rubbly hill. The spinifex was longer here. More time had passed since a burn.

I spied a promising bed above me. It looked like the Juna Downs impact layer; intriguingly and anomalously thick. I climbed straight up the slope at it, over low cliffs, through bushes and spinifex.

The bed was not what I expected. Wow – it was full of boulders! This very unusual in the Hamersley Basin, where mud is the fashionable grain size. I was mesmerized. Oh yeah, look for spherules. Bugger, could not find any in the bed, at all. I looked carefully. Louis looked carefully. None, none at all. Oh well, it was still cool. Many of the boulders in the bed were limestone which showed evidence of forming in shallow water: stromatolites and evaporites were common. Very, very cool. I’d never seen this stuff here before; it outcrops 250 kilometers to the northeast (where the shallow water was 2.5 billion years ago). A couple of the boulders were the size of the Cruiser. Very, very very cool. I am a sucker for giant clasts. This bed had to be a debris flow deposits; a type of cohesive, mud-rich underwater landslide. Looking at these guys is some of my favorite geology. Now if it had only contained impact spherules. Still, a fun discovery.

Late morning, still time to investigate the Koodaideri area. A bit further east, and another track towards the hills. It ended amid the ruins of a good half dozen buildings. Maybe this was the original Koodaideri? It could have been an outstation for one of the grazing operations that were here before the mines came in. All the remained were concrete foundations, bits of wire, and trash. Louis found a broken bottle from a brewer in Wittenoom, the old asbestos mining town sixty kilometers to the west. Wittenoom has been gone for over fifty years. I tried to feel this place. Who lived here? Did they like it? Did they enjoy the lovely Hamersley Range? Did they go to the Fortescue Hotel in Wittenoom to relax on days off? Where are they now?

It was 3:30. No sign of the impact layer, but a good day for seeing cool rocks and touching a bit of the recent past.

The most elusive impact layer in the Hamersley basin is located at the very top of the Jeerinah Formation, well below the spherule layer that’s the focus of this trip. Having given Koodaideri our best look see, I thought it worthwhile to run north across the Fortescue River Valley from Auski, to where the Jeerinah crops out.

Route 95 crosses the very broad Fortescue River valley as it heads towards the equator (it doesn’t get there, to be clear). The Fortescue flows only during floods, I suspect. I’m not even sure when we crossed the drainage per se. All the mulga, gum, and spinifex had a bathtub ring of mud from the last flood; no way to tell exactly where the drainage was.

We ascended out of the valley; a severe climb of at least 15 meters. The landscape here is different. Most of the rock is volcanic; the land looks burnt to a deeper shade of orange than I am used to from the Hamersley Ranges. It looks to support a more meager plant community as well. This might be because it makes for poorer soil, worse drainage, or something else I have not thought of.

It was 5, getting close to time to camp. Louis spied the old dirt road from Wittenoom to Port Hedland; another route supplanted by progress and bitumen. We turned off on it, drove far enough to not be able to hear road traffic, and swaged out.

23rd June. The Jeerinah outcrops were poor. I was able to identify the right stratigraphic interval and locations pretty easily, but the key areas were covered by scree and spinifex. Oh well, we looked. Time to head back to the Hamersley Ranges and the real project.

Lunch in Wittenoom Gorge. As I have probably written in previous years, Wittenoom was an asbestos mining community from the 1930s to the 1960s. It withered once the asbestos market died. The Australian government has been killing the town off since then to discourage visitors. There are no services available, save for a pay phone two kilometers east of town. Almost every building – including the source of the bottle Louis found at Koodaideri – has been torn down. A few holdouts and their private property remain. It’s eerie; I remember when the main street was lined with buildings.

I drove up Wittenoom Gorge to find a nice lunch spot. It’s still beautiful, although the asbestos fibers in the road and chunks of ore in the stream reminded me that it was not a place to linger. The water level in Cathedral Pool, my favorite spot, was quite high. The best lunch spot there was covered in lemon grass. No room to sit; no one had been there in a while.

A partial compensation for the lack of a spherule layer at Koodaideri, we measured a beautiful version of the layer adjacent to Wittenoom’s rubbish tip. Besides a great section, this area had the longest spinifex I’ve seen this trip. Louis hadn’t really had the pleasure of spinifex yet; this was his unavoidable introduction. The only way to move forward was to crash through the spinifex tuffs, take the pain of continual punctures, and wait for one’s legs to go numb.

Wittenoom Gorge is not place to camp. We headed further west to Bee Gorge to swag out. This is another favorite spot. It was a bit challenging this time. While there were plenty of all the usual items needed for a good camp: wood, flat only semi rocky spots to sleep, space to spread out, and a view, there were a couple distractions. First, the ground was alive with small insects. They did not seem interested in our food or in us, but they inevitably crawled onto whatever gear was in contact with the ground. That would be everything. Second, the sky became ominously cloudy. The light dimmed; I knew this meant rain was possible.

24th June – We slept through the bugs. The sky stayed gray. Intermittent drizzle began in the morning. It was a damp breakfast. I did not want to be stuck on a dirt track in any sort of rain. It was time to go to Tom Price.

As we headed out the track to the main dirt road, the showers began. The windshield wipers worked; that was a relief. I drove carefully west and then south through the range front. The rain got heavier, but was still intermittent. It was noticeably cooler; low clouds hit the landmarks I expected to see once we cleared Rio Tinto Gorge. The track was still fairly dry. I was glad to see that we were leaving a dust cloud behind us. Finally, bitumen 60 kilometers from Tom Price. The rain was steady but light.

Tom Price in the rain: another new experience. The Tourist Information Centre predicted rain all day. We shopped. I called my contact at the mine and set up time the next day to work on site. We did internet. One of the Cruiser’s back doors froze shut: probably dust in the mechanism. I pulled the plastic panels off, moved all the wires and stuff around, banged on it, but could not get it to function. Annoying. It rained really hard for 30 minutes – a real downpour. Wet schoolchildren wandered by.

It was time to swag out. Where to go? It was going to be wet wherever we went. I know it would be lower south of town. We drove a bit, found a track, and eventually came to a spot big enough for the truck, two swags, and a cooking spot. It rained. I sat in the truck and read. Louis built a shelter using our tarps and read. It got dark. I cooked. We slept in the increasingly intermittent rain.

Now I’ve seen rain in the Pilbara three times. This was certainly the most intense. Luckily it was congruent with my plans, and more inconvenient than anything else. All my gear is plastic; it dries fast. I discovered that spinifex is quite lovely when it’s wet.

A List of Things I Do Not Do at Home

1. Wake up before dawn
2. Make sure Venus still exists
3. Do my daily ablutions outside
4. Drive on the left side of the road
5. Navigate using GPS, topographic maps, and geologic maps
6. Use a phone card
7. Walk on desert pavement
8. Wade through spinifex and get punctured
9. Look at rocks and sedimentary strata
10. Use a rock hammer
11. Identify grasses, wildflowers, shrubs, and trees
12. Peer through a handlens at tiny round things
13. Watch wedge-tailed eagles, kestrels, galahs, willy wagtails, magpie-larks, spinifex pigeons, and kestrels
14. Climb steep rubbly hillsides
15. Wear a watch and keep track of multiple time zones
16. Sit on the edge of a cliff and eat lunch
17. Calculate the number of tyres on passing road trains
18. Say “no dramas, mate”
19. Enjoy all the scenery
20. Dig a fire pit, collect and burn wood
21. Cook by headlamp
22. Hear bats echo locate and fly overhead
23. Eat Tim Tams
24. Sleep outdoors in a different place every night
25. Sleep in a tube of cotton, plastic, and Goretex
26. Watch shooting stars at night
27. Count the number of stars in Scorpio (19) and study the shape of the Milky Way
28. Fall asleep at 9 pm
29. Be in the present for hours at a time

Undisclosed Location

June 20, second day of field work. After a warm swag out at Weeli Wolli Springs, we headed west and somewhat north to my next target site. After 35 kilometers of corrugated dirt track and a several times that on the Great Northern Highway (all of two lanes), the site came into view. It's a nice steep hill of strata .

I’d been to this location before. The plan was similar to much of the research emphasis of this trip: make repeated vertical measurements of stratigraphy (sedimentary layering and its characteristics) at regular intervals along the outcrop zone and to study the spherule-rich zones in particular. I’m trying to do this all over the Hamersley Range, as I described in an earlier post.

I knew from satellite imagery that there was turn off from the main road onto a dirt track that would pass close in front of the hill. The road looked familiar from space; it seemed to be the same track I’d traveled on in 1989 and 1996. The turn appeared as expected. I hauled the steering wheel left and the Landcruiser headed onto dirt. The track was new. Same exit point off the main highway, but it cut at a different angle across the bush. A sign appeared: “Warning Buried Fibreoptic Cable”. Hmm, must be a communications line for the West Angelas iron mine. No worries, the track was in good shape and headed where I wanted to go.

Eventually we reached the point of closest passage to the hill. Another left turn, over the berm at the edge of the track. A short cross country bounce, till I felt we were close enough to walk, climb the hill, find the layer, and still get enough exercise to feel virtuous.

I was pleased to see an extensive outcrop of limestone at the base of the hill. The geologic unit which I am studying at present is the Wittenoom Formation. It’s named after the Wittenoom family, who were early Dutch homesteaders or the equivalent in the Pilbara. The Wittenoom has two parts. The lower part is the Paraburdoo Member. It’s basically all dolomite – a type of limestone containing magnesium in addition to calcium. This dolomite also has lots of iron in it. It is thus a pleasant yellow to brown colors in weathered outcrops. It’s named after the mining town of Paraburdoo; I’ve read that Paraburdoo means “meat feathers” in the local Aboriginal language. The Paraburdoo is what I was seeing at the base of the hill.

The upper part of the Wittenoom Formation is called the Bee Gorge Member. It’s named after Bee Gorge, and I haven’t a clue who or what “Bee” was. There are certainly plenty of bees around here when wildflowers are blooming. I know the Bee Gorge Member very well. Not only does the impact layer occur in these strata, but the rocks on which I did my PhD research occur here.

The Bee Gorge sequence is like an old friend I visit regularly, who always shows me new and exciting things. It’s a diverse suite of rocks. The basic framework is shale, limestone, chert (very fine grained quartz), and ferruginous chert that represent the slow accumulation of fine grained sediment in the ocean through time. Intermixed with these are volcanic sandstones, the impact layer, sandstones, and other limestones that were deposited suddenly and episodically, interrupting the normal quiet conditions. This is the part that attracts me; the abrupt events when something exciting happens. Puzzling out what happened in these events is fun and creative work. It’s also rewarding to look at the Bee Gorge because it’s never the same in two places. The general sequence of rock types and units is constant, but the details - the charming part - keep changing.

We climbed the hill. After some casting about, I found a bed that I thought should be the impact layer. Louis eventually found spherules at its base, confirming that we were in the right place. We did our work. The spherule-rich part of the bed – the five or so centimeters at its base – also contained lots of small platy particles about the size and shape of a fingernail. These chips were bits of the sea floor under the impact layer that were eroded when it was deposited. They’re badly rusted; they were probably pyrite in the seafloor at the time they were eroded. The layer was just crammed with them. It was really unusual, and a challenge to try and understand how the cramming happened. I am still working on it.

We were done by late afternoon: time to head back to the truck and camp. I pointed us down through the Paraburdoo Member. One narrow drainage looked to have close to 100% exposure. It was a good place for a quick scan in search of a mythical missing impact layer. It was hard to walk down hill through steep, rubbly outcrop and look for tiny spherical particles.

I carefully descended a steep smooth face of delicately brown and tan banded limestone. I thought, great photograph; the light was good. I stopped at the base to get out my camera. As I turned, a loose slab of rock caught my eye. It had petroglyphs on it! Almost the whole surface had Aboriginal imagery: whirls and what I think were representations of throwing sticks. Time indeed for a few pictures. This was exciting; I’ve found petroglyphs only once before in the Pilbara. It was a natural place for Aboriginal art; there was a spring in the middle of the drainage, and actually a couple tiny pools of standing water. Spring fed pools were new to me in this area. It made sense that they would be here. Being limestone, the Paraburdoo Member would be dissolved by rainwater and form caves, i.e., underground plumbing systems for groundwater. This spring was a spot where groundwater was leaking onto the surface. The other Aboriginal site I have “found” also showed signs of springs.

We searched around the drainage looking at all the flat rocks, but could not find any additional art. It’s a place I could well imagine Aboriginals using. In addition to surface water (a rare commodity), there was food, evidenced by plenty of wallaby scat and a couple of plants that could provide small berries and fruit.

Further down the drainage, I found a piece of nautilus shell. I can’t imagine how this piece of a sea animal got here. It was not a fossil. In any case, the rocks under it are a factor of ten times too old to have such fossils in them. It’s of course exciting to imagine an Aboriginal transporting the shell here hundreds or thousands of years ago. It’s also possible that some Westerner dropped it in the drainage recently. There were some test bore holes nearby. Still, another exciting discovery.

So, for the second time on this trip, I’ve had an experience which has brought me a step further in knowing Aboriginal senses of place. Tnorala was explained; this site, as far as I know, is unreported. I’ll investigate that back in Perth.

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.