Hamelin Pool

An interesting place – you would have been isolated if you lived here in the 1880’s and early 1900’s.

A Telegraph Station was built in 1884 to connect communications between Wyndham and Kalgoorlie. Was also a bit of a port for the local stations (few and far between) to ship out bales of wool. They were taken by Camel Dray to a wool storage shed and then on a small ‘dinghy’ style boat to a shallow boat called a Lighter. This then took the bales to a larger ship in the deeper waters of Dirk Hartog Island. The whole of shark bay is quite shallow – an average of 5 metres. The wagon wheel marks can still be seen in the soft rock of the “stromatolites”, on the edge of the bay.

Wagon wheel marks can be seen running through  rock

Are these stromatolites evidence of life on earth 3.5 billion years ago?? The rocks in this area are fairly rare. The water is very shallow, and salty so the usual predators of the cyanobacteria (blue/green algae) don’t work so well. This evidently traps the sand and shell grit and anything else and the rocks form in layers, in different shapes – mounds or stack formations. 

Stromatolite stacks

All this sounds feasible, but how they (“some scientists” – not named)  get the various layering of rocks showing evidence of the changes in rotation speed of Earth over history and that is 3.5 billion years is beyond my comprehension. Not to mention my beliefs – that the earth was created approx. 6000 years ago!

Quarrying site for blocks of this soft
limestone.

Coquina Limestone

The other interesting industry, of a bygone era, that was carried out at Hamelin Pool was the “mining”, or cutting of very soft limestone blocks. Similar to what is done at Mount Gambier. Used for building. Not overly long lasting probably, is it could be crumbles away in time (as evident where people have touched the material to see what is like., it is a bit irresistible because it looks like tiny little, whole shells  sitting together. Which is exactly what it is! I think the science says, the rain falls and dissolves the calcium carbonates in this type of tiny cockle shell and forms a natural glue. Hence, holds together really strongly, but still looks like shells – called “Coquina”. There are a number of buildings in Denham and district constructed with these blocks.

Spring is in the air at Hamelin Station