23 Oct 2012 - Day 5: Stromatolites of Hamelin Pool and Shell Beach

Before turning into Shark Bay World Heritage sites, I stopped by the Billabong Roadhouse to fill up some gas for my rented car.  At the same time, I bought some warm food (fries, sandwiches and hot wings) for the coming World Heritage Drive.

Our first stop in Shark Bay is Hamelin Pool Marine Nature Reserve, which is most famous for the stromatolites that can be found there.  Stromatolites are formed by the oldest organism on Earth called Cyanobacteria, which appear 3500 million years ago.  These ancient bacteria grew in colonies, trapping sediments to form enormous mats or great reefs of rock-like structures called stromatolites.

There is a boardwalk in the area where we can have a close-up view of stromatolites.  Hamelin Pool is one of only two places in the world with living marine stromatolites.  This is one of the reasons why Shark Bay is named as a World Heritage Site.

From Hamelin Pool, it took us about 30mins to reach our next stop, the Shell Beach.  Once again, this is one of only two beaches in the world made entirely from shells.  So far in all the other beaches, we had to look for shells.  Over here, it's everywhere.  Just simply grabbed anywhere on the beach, you will have a handful of shells.  From the below pictures, it may look like Jerlene was standing on sand.  But no, it's all SHELLS!  Really amazing.

Now let's take a close-up view of the beach.  It's mainly made of shells of the cockle species.  Masses of shells have been drifting in for about 4000 years.  They are five metres deep here and are still piling up today.

After a day of long drive, we finally reached our accommodation, Monkey Mia Dolphin Resort, at around 6:30pm.

From our room, it's just a minute walk to the beach.  Jerlene and Javier had some great fun on the beach.  They had been asking when they can play sand on a beach over the past few days.  Though it's already pretty late, I did not want to disappoint them.

The water is very calm and clear while the sand is very cool and fine.  As it's getting dark, I promised Jerlene and Javier that they can continue to play sand next morning after the dolphin feeding.  With that, they agreed to return to our room and call it a day.