Hamelin Pool 14-16 August 2017

Some of these living fossils are now more protected since the erection of this board walk out over the microbial mats and  stromatolite structures.

Living fossils! Stromatolites - not us cheeky! We camped in one of the few places in the world where these ancient life forms still exist - Hamelin Pool in World Heritage Shark Bay.
WA is internationally significant for its variety of stromatolite sites and Hamelin Pool is one of the most interesting of those sites, for me at least. It is home to the most diverse and abundant collection of living stromatolites in the world it seems. Wow and again, wow!! And just by the way, north of Hamelin Pool scattered throughout one of my very favourite places, the Pilbara, are many many stromatolite fossil over 3000 years old. The oldest known fossils in the world. Australia! what a mind-blowing, amazing place.

Seen through the water, some of these stromatolites give off bubbles of oxygen. We were limited in what we could see because we stayed on the designated board walk. But they are such very interesting phenomena.

So what are stromatolites? they are layer upon layer of Cyanobacteria (remember those dark stripes in the Bungle Bungles? These are similar creatures). This primitive life form is similar to the earliest organisms that appeared on earth 3 odd billion years ago, organisms that produced oxygen for subsequent oxygen-dependant life forms.

Not as spectacular, these Thrombolites at Lake Thetis south of Hamelin Pool at Cervantes, are cousins of the Stromatolites. They form cluster structures. Like this one, many that we saw were damaged. It is only recently that these phenomenal 'organisms' have been more treasured and protected. Last time we were here, you could simply walk around and over them as you pleased.

This thrombolite was exposed as the waters of Lake Thetis receded at Cervantes. There are quite a number of these around the lake but it is difficult to locate them.

The stromatolites at Hamelin Pool have survived for 5000 years or so. We'd arrived at World Heritage Shark Bay! Ten years since we were first last. And no we didn't go to Monkey Mia.