Giant Boab on the way to the Bungle Bungles. Probably 1200 years old or somewhere close.
The world heritage listed Bungle Bungle Range is located within Purnululu National Park in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
Purnululu, meaning ‘sandstone’, has long been inhabited by local Aboriginal people, but did not become widely known to the rest of the world until the mid 1980s.
We seem to remember Helen Daniels going on a painting expedition there when Jason and Kylie were the stars of Neighbours.
The road from the highway is about 54km and is the worst part of the trip, the roads inside the park are pretty good by comparison.
Cathedral Gorge is a in the north of the park and is pretty spectacular, photos can’t really get it all in the walls are too high.
The Bungle Bungle Range, Purnululu has been listed as an outstanding landscape that is an incomparable natural phenomenon. It reveals the story of its formation over hundreds of millions of years, and helps unlock the story of the earth’s history.
Twenty million years of weathering have produced the eroded sandstone towers and banded beehive structures of the Bungle Bungle Range. Dark bands, formed by cyanobacteria, winding horizontally around the domes, contrast with the lighter orange sandstone. Cyanobacteria are single-celled organisms that represent some of the oldest life-forms on earth. These organisms have been found as fossils in rocks elsewhere in Western Australia in rocks that are believed to be up to 3500 million years old.
The cyanobacterial bands are up to several metres wide, yet only a few millimetres thick. The crusts help stabilise and protect the ancient and fragile sandstone towers.
The dramatically sculptured structures undergo remarkable seasonal variation in appearance, including striking colour transition following rain