And just crossed off another "MUST SEE" geological World Heritage site - the Geikie Gorge Devonian reef - or just a tiny part of the over 300 million year old reef system that crossed NW Ozz for 50 million years and was about half the size of today's biggie - the 2,000 km long Great Barrier reef off the Queensland coast way back there to the east.
I took an early morning cruise along a spectacular part of the gorge - with water in the river channel even now at the lowest end of the dry, the guide pointing out that the massive change in limestone cliff colour from white to dark grey way above our heads marks the "normal" and not the high water mark. At real high water during a flood the river goes over its banks, up to or over the clifftops we see - and spreads out over 30 km over the surrounding floodplains - so the brochure I read last night was right - a truly awesome sight, with only natural and artificial islands sticking out here and there - hopefully including Fitzroy Lodge, the village and (most of the modern highway. So the Fitzroy in flood is way up there as one of the 5 biggies in the world..
There are about 30 of us in the flat-bottomed electrically powered boat and as we cruise past these fantastic cliffs the guide tells us a lot about wildlife - the crocs, the roos, the fish, the plants and the trees, but very little about the rocks themselves, apart from telling us it's a big old reef and we're still learning a lot about it..... What a shame, as I can clearly see the bedding patterns in the cliff showing us the different parts of the reef - it wouldn't take much for the guides to make these grey rocks much more interesting! Instead of talking about threats to the Ozz environment, the guy could be saying - "Hey look, there's a big coral colony that broke off the top of the reef and slid down the front!" I restrain myself, keep quiet, BIG WHIMP - but here, like so many other places I've seen, the Ozzies need to be told more about the exciting history of their wonderful continent! Maybe then they'll stop raping it.....
I took an early morning cruise along a spectacular part of the gorge - with water in the river channel even now at the lowest end of the dry, the guide pointing out that the massive change in limestone cliff colour from white to dark grey way above our heads marks the "normal" and not the high water mark. At real high water during a flood the river goes over its banks, up to or over the clifftops we see - and spreads out over 30 km over the surrounding floodplains - so the brochure I read last night was right - a truly awesome sight, with only natural and artificial islands sticking out here and there - hopefully including Fitzroy Lodge, the village and (most of the modern highway. So the Fitzroy in flood is way up there as one of the 5 biggies in the world..
There are about 30 of us in the flat-bottomed electrically powered boat and as we cruise past these fantastic cliffs the guide tells us a lot about wildlife - the crocs, the roos, the fish, the plants and the trees, but very little about the rocks themselves, apart from telling us it's a big old reef and we're still learning a lot about it..... What a shame, as I can clearly see the bedding patterns in the cliff showing us the different parts of the reef - it wouldn't take much for the guides to make these grey rocks much more interesting! Instead of talking about threats to the Ozz environment, the guy could be saying - "Hey look, there's a big coral colony that broke off the top of the reef and slid down the front!" I restrain myself, keep quiet, BIG WHIMP - but here, like so many other places I've seen, the Ozzies need to be told more about the exciting history of their wonderful continent! Maybe then they'll stop raping it.....
I spend the rest of the day planning the next steps on the way to Broome and onwards to Perth, struggling with the war between this laptop, microsoft and the local wifi, trying to get this blog published..... A quick visit to the historic local pub as a lunch break was unsuccessful - I got totally turned off by the racial segregation between (aboriginal) public bar and (white) "restaurant" and retreated to the lodge and the laptop....
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