Sands of time …

A compromise title, I figured that the more obvious Geology of the Kimberley would get little attention in the blogosphere whilst Kimberley Gets Her Rocks Off might get the wrong sort.

The Kimberley that you see as you cruise past is what’s left by processes over eons. The time involved is almost unimaginable compared with a human lifespan and the processes seem extraordinary but they could not be more ordinary. It’s all a matter of some key events, time in abundance and weather.

The first key event happened two billion years ago when a little tectonic plate, the Kimberley Craton, smacked slowly into the North Australian Craton. The Kimberley Craton rode up over the other forming a mountain range that probably rivalled the modern European Alps in size. (Kimberley likes it on top).

Erosion commenced and the products were washed into the adjacent shallow seas forming sandstone which is up to 5km thick in places. Uplifting and the outpouring of basalt (especially in the Mitchell Plateau and Ord River region) followed by more erosion. Add a few volcanic injections of dolerite (especially the King Leopold Range). Take a great barrier reef and raise it well above modern sea-level as the Napier and Ningbing Ranges and all you need to do now is to add flora and fauna.

To summarise, on this cruise you will be seeing a lot of sandstone.

In the southern section it will be very impressive because it is folded. Further north it will be very impressive because it is not. It will be most impressive early and late in the day when the low sun falls on it.

Folding
Folding
Tilting
Tilting
Block faulting
Block faulting

And where conditions are right the uppermost blocks can undergo further weathering to produce beehive like structures. This can be seen on a grand scale in the Bungle Bungles but also occurs on the coast …

If you are inclined to study this topic more thoroughly here are a couple of handy links …

kimberleycoast.com.au/kimberley-geology/

sciencewa.net-kimberley-alps

Or just continue the cruise …

 

Broome …

I first visited Broome in 1996. I played a small part in an Australian Wader Studies Group expedition that caught and banded birds like these …

If you click on the picture it will fill your screen and you can test your diagnostic skills. The back arrow on your browser will return you here. (This is true of almost all the photos on this blog).

It’s a place that has a great magnetic pull. A couple of the guys on the expedition stayed on and made it their home. I have been back many times and usually stay with one of them.

Most of the waders nest in Siberia and come to Oz to escape the winter snow of their breeding grounds. Roebuck Bay is a key resource for enormous numbers of them. It is the premier site for shore birds in Australia.

William Dampier explored the northern coasts of Western Australia back in the 17th century. The bay is named for his ship. By the 1880’s the surrounding waters were being exploited for pearl shell. In 1883 John Forrest chose the site for a port town that would serve the pearlers as a base. He named the place after Sir Frederick Broome who was the Governor of WA at the time. Sir Fred was not much impressed to have his name associated with such a humble outpost.

Quite an assortment of humanity worked in the pearling industry. The Japanese were especially prominent and there is a cemetery that provides a last resting place for many of their dead.

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They also exerted their influence in the Second World War when they bombed the place four times killing 88 on one occasion.

The pearl industry is still important but has changed considerably. In past times it was all about pearl shell which was used extensively for buttons. Nowadays buttons are made of plastic and the industry makes its money out of pearls, mainly cultured.

Broome is the administrative centre for the Kimberley and is a base for the mining and gas extraction industries.

Above all, though, it’s a tourist destination. It boasts an international airport, an open air cinema, dinosaur footprints, camel rides, spectacular sunsets and a nude beach that extends some 17km from Cable Beach to, believe it or not, the mouth of Willie Creek.

This visit was part of a package with Zegrahm Expeditions so I got to stay at the Cable Beach Resort, such luxury. Nonetheless I played hookey the first day and went birding with my good friend Chris Hassell who is a professional ornithologist with Birdlife International and the Global Flyway Network.

A splendid day was had and at the end of it I was deposited at the port and embarked on the Oceanic Discoverer for a voyage to Darwin via the Kimberley coast.

And a splendid vessel she is.

 

 

The Kimberley revisited …

Back in 2013 I made a 4WD trip to the Kimberley in search of the Black Grasswren. It was a splendid adventure which I described on my return.

The Kimberley is a remote and sparsely populated part of Western Australia. It is located entirely in the tropics. In summer it’s hot and wet, in winter it’s hot and dry.

 

270px-KimberleyHere is the red bit in a little more detail …

500px-Kimberleys,_Western_Australia_map,_labelled.svg

As you can see, between Derby and Wyndham the “main road” is always more than one hundred kilometres from the coast. The Gibb River Road is a modest expedition in itself but to really get to grips with the Kimberley you have to do battle with situations like this …

King Edward River

and from time to time you pass the skeletons of the vehicles that didn’t make it …

SONY DSC

Your rewards are the bush, the waterfalls, the wildlife, the rock art and the exhilaration of getting out intact. All of which just makes you want to see more … and the way to do that is by ship.

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Update …

The year rolls along. My Aussie birdlist for 2015 currently stands at 212 comfortably ahead of the days elapsed. The addition of new species has slowed. That’s inevitable, but the change of seaons brings its own rewards. The first Flame Robin of the winter turned up on the farm on 11th of April, a lone female plumaged bird. Numbers are building. I’m looking forward to Swift Parrot.

A change of scenery will also help. I think I’ll head to the Kimberley … I’ll tell you about it when I get back.

Yesterday …

… praise Gaia, was Earth Day.

Must confess, I missed it, but it’s never to late to say thank you.

The very first Earth Day occurred on April 22 1970 at Fairmont Park, Philadelphia. According to Ira Einhorn it was organised by Ira Einhorn. This tends to be played down these days.

Certainly he was there. He gave a rousing speech for 30 minutes or so before introducing the keynote speaker Senator Edmund Musky, sorry, Muskie. Musky comes later. I wonder what Ira said in that 30 minutes. A Google search made a little but permanent mark on my metadata file but yielded nothing.

We can speculate that he spoke about the crisis that beset that particular time. The following day the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” Were they quoting Ira?

In that same month Paul Ehrlich wrote …

Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.

… but before we jump to the conclusion that he was quoting Ira we must remember that the year before Ehrlich had predicted an Eco-Catastrophe that we would cause mass starvation by 1975. For the Earth Day edition of The Progressive he predicted the great Die-Off. He dismissed as optimists other experts who thought we might hold out as long as 1980.

It was a time of extreme crisis. Predictions were dire. Ehrlich alone had predicted the imminent loss of nine tenths of the world’s rainforest, that air pollution would claim hundreds of thousands of lives, 200,000 in smog disasters in just LA and New York in the single year of 1973. He declared that the life expectancy of Americans had fallen to just 49 years.

A whole bunch of journalists citing experts and experts citing each other were in on the act. The world’s resources would be gone, the world’s food would be gone, the oxygen would be gone. Even the daylight would be gone. You can find a catalogue <HERE>. A couple of my favourites …

Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

and another, it has always troubled me that Carbon Dioxide got such a bad rap whilst Nitrogen got off scot free ..

Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.

If you are reading this it’s clear that we dodged the bullet, and we dodged the bullet thanks to Earth Day.

And thanks to Ira. Whether he was the founder or merely the Master of Ceremonies at Earth Day number one he did his bit.

Holly Maddox was Ira’s girlfriend. She left him and moved to New York. Ira threatened to toss her remaining belongings if she didn’t pick them up. So she went back to Philadelphia to do just that and was never seen alive again. The police did interview Ira who said that the last he saw her she was on her way to buy some tofu and bean sprouts.

Eighteen months later the guy in the apartment below complained of a brown liquid seeping through the ceiling and a musky smell. Police found the badly beaten body in a trunk in Ira’s bedroom. The body was surrounded by news paper.

Ira made bail … and immediately skipped town. After 23 years, he was extradited from France and put on trial. Taking the stand in his own defense, Einhorn claimed that his ex-girlfriend had been killed by CIA agents who framed him for the crime because he knew too much about the agency’s paranormal military research. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

The moral of the story is clear. The Earth can be saved by composting bullshit … but it’s not the best way to recycle your girlfriend.

 

A new contender …

… in the Politician of the Year contest has emerged in the Queen’s own state.

But first a walk down memory lane. A previous winner has withdrawn from a civil case against him on the grounds that defending himself is endangering his life. The man who concluded the lying defence of his venality with the assertion that Tony Abbott wasn’t fit to be in the parliament has decided not to contest the case brought by the Fair Work Commission. The Commission are seeking to recover $5000 of HSU funds spent on prostitutes and about $350,000 used for his campaign for the seat of Dobell.  Craig Thomson asked the court to dismiss the case because it increased his risk of self harm. Not an entirely original strategy …

The new guy is Billy Gordon. As far as can be determined from the media a combination of malign influences exerted by Tony Abbott and the Catholic Church caused Mr Gordon to beat up a couple of his wives and his mother and avoid making child maintenance payments. His rap sheet includes some other minor matters such as breaking and entering.

Billy was first preselected for the federal election of 2013 and endorsed by Kevin Rudd as a seriously good bloke. This despite the fact that his extensive criminal history was known to the Bligh Labor Government at least as early as 2008.

It has to be noted with considerable approval that Premier Bucket of Queensland has acted decisively to excise this cancerous growth from the Labor body politic, waiting only long enough to secure his vote in last Friday’s confidence motion and for him to resign. It will be six weeks before parliament sits again. If that seems of dubious virtue, she is a paragon when compared with Julia Gillard’s handling of the Thomson affair or Ted Baillieu’s sheltering of Geoff Shaw.