​Karratha and Dampier - 30 July to 3 August 2017

Everywhere you look there are piles large and small of these red rocks nestled amongst spinifex and scrub, snowy Snappy Gums and vibrant Sturt's Desert Pea

Part of Deep Gorge. It is rather awesome as well as gorgeous!

Karratha and Dampier sit within one of the strangest geographical phenomenon - piles of broken rocks the colour of dried blood. It's as if they have been dumped there in huge jumbled mounds ready for processing, but no they are a visible part of the Pilbara Craton! The Craton is a very old and stable part of the earth's crust and one of only two pristine Archaean (3 billion yo) crusts identified on earth. Did I hear a wow!! It is believed to possibly be part of the super-continent of Ur - that's way before Gondwana. Worth a look up on google - it is absolutely mind blowing - my mind at least!
So what about those rock piles which surrounded us? The rocks are igneous, part of the earth's crust and/or mantle so are very hard and resistant to erosion unlike the surrounding and overlying sedimentary rock. Why do they look like rubble? It seems that fractures developed in the crust due to cooling and movement over the billions of years. Then when that rock was exposed due to the erosion of surrounding rock, it collapsed leaving these astonishing piles. More than that you'll need to look up!

We drove through the loading facility at Port Lambert and felt dwarfed by the enormous structures towering over and around us.

And looming on the horizon on the west of the Burrup Peninsula is Woodside LNG plant.  Quite intimidating. We went to their Visitors Centre and spent an hour or two learning a little about the construction, drilling, refining, etc etc of this precious earth  juice!

What a place of contrasts - I love it! Gazing through the jigsaw puzzle of steel girders, towers, conveyor belts, giant icecream scoops, and long cantilevered protrusions disgorging crushed ore - or salt. Beyond all that manmade machinery and 'stuff' stretches the most cyclone-prone coastline on the west coast. And beyond that, the Indian Ocean where out to sea, whales breach and send columns of spray high into the air - we saw a couple of those glorious big beast! 3000 whales pass by these shores every year, some bringing their young in close to shore to feed and rest.

One of the larger carvings high above me.

Of course Lindsay had to take a closer look! and there I was with my heart in my mouth. Pretty precarious really, the naughty boy (we saw later a sign saying not to climb on the rocks - woops!)

They look rough hewn and range in size.

Another carving. They all were strange looking creatures.

About turn and look in the other direction, and among the tumbled piles of broken pieces of the earth's crust are 1000s of images etched into the rocks of Deep Gorge in the Murujuga NP in the Burrup peninsula. They are believed to be 10s of 1000s of years old and the highest concentration of rock carvings in the world. This place!

I found this exotic looking beauty and have since figured it is a member of the emu or poverty bush family.  

There were no defined paths into the gorge. One just followed a stony passage cut bu streams over time (so much more exciting!)

And just down the road and on a more current note. Red dog, made world famous by Louis de Bernieres, and then an Aussie star by a couple of movies, is buried near the Point Samson, near Roebourne and Cossack. But those places are stuff of another story - maybe!

A memorial at Dampier to to Red Dog, amazing creature that he was.