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| It was a bit of a climb to Nature's Window in Kalbarri National Park. Just a round trip of 6/10ths of a mile, but steep and slippery. Nevertheless, the view was definitely worth the workout. | |
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| It was a bit of a climb to Nature's Window in Kalbarri National Park. Just a round trip of 6/10ths of a mile, but steep and slippery. Nevertheless, the view was definitely worth the workout. | |
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| Strombolites and stromatolites, which is which? Well, according to local information, the ones on the left below are strombolites near Cervantes in a part of Pinnacles National Park. The ones on the right below are stromatolites in the Shark Bay area near Denham. But according to everything else I've read, there's not much difference between the two. They're reefs of rock-like donut shapes made by colonies of ancient microscopic "critters." We sought these out because we had also seen similar formations in Newfoundland last year. Click here to see those northern hemisphere cousins, called thrombolites. | |
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| The Shell Quarry, still in limited use as the sign below explains, is just behind the Shell Beach in the Shark Bay area near Denham. | |
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| The "tressellated pavement' below has a complicated geologic explaination. But the very smooth and geometric rock layers were given the name for an obvious reason -- it looks like an old stone road. This formation was on the eastern coast of Tasmania. | |
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In spite of the cold in Tasmania, the rainforests were muggy and musty. Their deep green was a strange contrast to the gray weather and the new snow that kept me from getting a good photo of the "cradle" at Cradle Mountain (below).
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| Mitchell Falls in the far northern coastal wilderness of Western Australia | Tasmans Arch in eastern Tasmania |
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| OK, Lake Argyle really isn't a feat of nature -- it's a massive feat of human engineering, a manmade lake covering more than 600 square miles with a water supply to turn the desert plains around Kununurra into Australian farmland. But it is calm, and beautiful, and a great place for a sunset toast. | |
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| And speaking of sunsets, one of Mother Nature's greatest feats is the sky -- the flawless blue days with the moon never quite setting and the always spectacular evenings with late-developing clouds to provide vivid colors. | |
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