Hamelin Pool and Denham

I'm at a little place called Hamelin. It is south of Carnarvon (which I skipped). It isn't really a town. It is the old telegraph station and the wool camels used to offload onto ships here. They were camels that carried the wool. Not hairy camels.

Currently the telegraph and post office buildings remain and a toilet block and bush kitchen have been built where the Afghan camel fuc... Handlers would rest and fuc... Water their camels.

So 2/3rds of the place remains. There is no town or anything, just those historical buildings. The telegraph building is the kitchen and office of the caravan park and the post office has been turned into a nifty little museum. It is clearly an amateur museum but it is admirable and informative.

There used to be a residence but it was bought and moved south which is a real shame because it was an example of the first interesting thing about the place. It was made of shell blocks that were mined here. Lots of little shells have compacted into a sort of cinder block like substance and just over the hill they used to cut it into blocks for building materials. The little quarry remains and it is reminds me of real life minecraft because I play too many games.

The second interesting thing, I knew was here, which is why I came here. Over on the shore of the very salty Hamlin Pool (70% saltier that the ocean, which is interesting because it is clearly part of the ocean) lives the stromalatites. They are living rocks. I learned of them along time ago when I read Down Under by Bill Bryson.

Fossils of these things were discovered ages ago and I believe are the oldest fossilised life forms discovered. They date back 3.5 billion years. They discovered more fossils here at Shark Bay and got a bit of a shock when bubbles were coming out of them. Turns out they were alive.

They are formed when bacteria bind together particles to form a mat. This then provides a habitat for other different bacteria and a little community forms. More bacteria bind more particles and these little towers that are chockas with bacteria form. The sign reckons there are thousands of different species of bacteria inside these rocks they've created. They survive all sorts of environmental catastrophes and reseed the earth afterwards.

I find it extremely interesting, which is lucky because the stromalatites are boring as to look at.

The final thing that I found interesting is that back in the 60s NASA was conducting a space flight, which for the sake of this story I'll say was Apollo 11 (very doubtful). Data was being sent from a tracking station in South Australia to Carnarvon just to the north via the inland telegraph line. That line broke (side note: the lines often broke when Aboriginal people would acquire the ceramic insulators off them to use a knapping tools. Not sure if that was the case in the 60s) so the transmission was routed through here and the old duck running the place sat up all night morse coding endless streams of meaningless (to her) data through to Carnarvon. She received a commendation for her efforts, which for the sake of this story I will say was the Medal of Honour. She remains the only non-american that I have mentally fabricated a medal of honour for.

Not much else to report. Yesterday I crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and today I crossed the 26th Parallel.

I also thought of a really good children's story about a friendly huntsman spider that just wants to grow up to be big and strong so it can murder the family whose house it lives in.

I only mention this because I had two excellent ideas while cycling around Europe and one of them has since been created (not by me unfortunately). It was a tent that has a stretcher bed for a base. You can get them now. I almost got one for this trip. Such a good idea. The other idea was a bicycle for horses. Essentially it would be a 1 hp car. You're welcome, environment/horse lovers/bicycle lovers/car lovers.
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I'm currently in Denham. I came for a ride in for a look and some lunch. It is blustery and I'm a little bit cold. I just went to have a look at the church made from shell blocks. I was told it is always open but it most definitely isn't.

There is not much else in Denham. It's a nice enough town that appears to be built into the sand dunes. The main street runs along the shore with a bit of a makeshift marina dredged into the sand in an almost perfect rectangle.

But the wind is really cold so I'm going back to Hamelin Pool. Ironically the telegraph station doesn't have phone reception so my next blog post may have to be by Morse.