The Billabong Road House, this is the equivalent of Gordano Services except that these roadhouses can be up to 350km apart with no towns or fuel between.
Hamelin Bay Beach which is where the stromatolites are consists of small cockle shells. These are all stuck together and have been quarried in the past as complete blocks.
Old Quarry areas.
Here is an explanation of how they became solid.
Here we have a boardwalk for viewing the stromatolites, (these are the last ones I promise).
The locals here claim that these are the only genuine stromatolites in Australia. I think this is because these were the first to be discovered in Australia the only others known in the world at that time where in the Bahamas. This gave this area a uniqueness that has since been lost and has created some rivalry since the other two sites have been discovered.
The signs can explain better than I can
These do look different to the others.
These red caps are out of the water on the shore line.
That is the last of stromatolites.
This is the old telegraph station which is now a museum, it is normally open and I was quite keen to look inside but I picked the only day in 50 years the museum keeper had decided to have off. I am coming across a lot of closed buildings on this trip.
Although the beach we had just left was shells there is another beach further round the coast called Shell Beach which is more well known.
This is an enormous beach entirely made up of cockle shells.
Close up view they are pure white and clean. On the shore line they are hardly damaged.
In the evening we camped at Whalebone Beach an authorised camping area but no facilities.
We had a beautiful sunset but red sky at night defiantly not shepherds delight as it started to rain in the early hours of the morning.
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