Hamelin Pool and their Stromatolites

We went back to Carnarvon to pick up Lou's school pack for the term. This is all the material for distance school needed - worksheets for the homework, information sheets, and a couple of mags and books to read, then some skipping rope or art supplies etc. Now all we have to do is pull our the blue folder for the fortnight, read the lesson, do the exercises and submit by Friday each week. The feedback from the teachers is thorough and encouraging. Their school report for end of term is very succinct, just that it's completed satisfactorily.

We also restock up on food in town. A visit to the ice cream and fruit place is mandatory here. We try Sapote ice cream, a choc covered banana, mango ice cream, a choc covered mango ice cream on paddle pop sticks, plus some dried fruit.

Stayed in a caravan with a shipping container style room extension with en suite. It was totally clean and awesome. Got the fly rip repaired by the canvas man and lady, but one pole is bent so we're not looking good to limp the tent home. It's like having a rip or a bent rod in an umbrella.

Left: the Stromatolites, living fossils.

We're in Hamelin pool outback stay. Immaculate facilities here. The buildings are well maintained, tiled walkways, crushed gravel sand drive areas, neat gardens, even though it's a semi arid area. After the squalor of Red Bluff, everything seems 5 star.

Visited Stromatolites. They live in water. They are over 3 billion years old - about 3/4 of the time that earth has existed. The discovery of these is like finding a living fossil, one that is about ten times older than dinosaurs.

Without those, life as we know it could not have evolved, ie humans would not be here. Before these guys, the earth had a CO2 atmosphere, less than 1 percent oxygene. They take CO2 and make oxygen, making all life now on earth possible. When oxygen was first introduced into the atmosphere, the skies turned blue. it caused a mass extinction for other microbes, as they breathed carbon dioxide. It took billions of years, billenia!, for these microbes to photosynthesise enough exygene to change the atmosphere from 1 percent to the 20 percent we have today. They dominate fossil records for 80% of earth's history.

They are a whole community of microbes, like a miniature rainforest eco system. The grab some small rock particles, like sand I suppose, knit it together, thus providing a place for other microbes. Each produces stuff that others can use. They are covered by slime, against the heat and to hold water, nutrients etc. Once they link up, they form layers, a mat of microbes. When they put rock down, they are then called Stromatolites.

Of the few Stromatolite assemblages, Hamelin Pool is the biggest and the most diverse. The microbes vary according to whether they need to survive being out of water at low tide, and how deep in the water in other places. "The sheer number of stromatolites at Hamelin is mind blowing, and then you see all sorts of shapes and sizes as you move around the pool" says Erica Suosaari, geologist. 

Hamelin Pool has limited water flow. With evaporation, the water is twice as salty as the sea, limiting what would grow and live there, meaning the competition in here is limited, and the microbes can thrive. Amazin sh11t. Are these guys required for alien life? Seeing rock formations indicating these microbes would be evidence of primitive life.