“Bunda Cliffs” Where the Earth End?

Bunda Cliffs is located on the Great Australian Bight in Southern Australia, is the vast, featureless Nullarbor Plain (is part of the area of flat, almost treeless, arid or semi-arid country of southern Australia), actually the “world’s largest single piece of limestone”, covering more than an area of 270,000 square kilometers and stretching over 1,000 kilometers from the east to the west. The area is so flat that the Trans Australian Railway runs across its surface for about 483 kilometers in a fully straight line. However, on the surface of the plain there are areas of slight depressions where sparse rainfall has slowly dissolved away some of the limestone. There are also places where underground caves or sinkholes have collapsed to form dents in the surface. But mostly, the plain is horizontally flat and devoid of trees, as its Latin name recommends. The “Nullarbor Plain” ends brusquely at the remarkable “Bunda Cliffs” containing over 200-kilometer-long precipice curving around the Great Australian Bight. Bunda Cliffs form the southern edge of the Nullarbor Plain which extends far inland. The white colored base you see near the bottom of the cliff face is Wilson Bluff Limestone. This chalky material made as part of an ancient seabed when Australia started to separate from Antarctica 65 million years ago. This Wilson Limestone is up to 300 metres thick but only the upper portion is visible in Bunda Cliffs. Moreover, above the white Wilson Limestone are whitish, grey or brown layers of limestone or crystalline rock. Few layers incorporate marine fossils as well as worms and molluscs indicating their marine origin. So, other layers are created with entirely of marine sediment (foraminifera). The Bunda cliffs are capped by a hardened layer of windblown sand laid down between 1.6 million and 100,000 year ago.

These majestically beautiful cliffs are some 60 to 120 meters high and sheer, and can be easily viewed from numerous viewing points along the Eyre Highway east of Eucla and west of Nullarbor roadhouse. However, they are better appreciated from the air. The Eyre Highway, Australia’s main east / west link, follows the line of this remarkable coast less than a kilometer inland. The highway was named after Edward John Eyre, who along with John Baxter and three aboriginals, set off from Fowlers Bay in 1841 in an attempt to reach Albany in Western Australia across the Nullarbor Plain. Though, lack of water and dangerous hardship gave rise to a mutiny and two of the aboriginal boys shot John Baxter and absconded. Eyre and the third Aborigine, Wylie, continued on their journey and completed the crossing in June 1841. The Eyre Highway was laid precisely a century later in 1941. Therefore, more than a distance of 85 kilometers along the highway, there’re 5 main lookouts on the cliffs with signed, gravel access roads from the highway. The western lookout is the most admired because tourists can walk to piece of rock jutting out of the cliff that provides a vantage looking point. At the eastern end of Bunda Cliffs there is a lookout at the Head of the Bight where tourists can stay for hours watching Southern Right Whales in the ocean below the cliffs. Whereas on the Southern Right Whales migrate from the sub-Antarctic in the autumn and give birth to calves in inshore water along the southern Australian coast, and then remain in the vicinity for months while the calves put on weight. Head of the Bight is one of these calving-mating grounds. If you want to see them, then there is a charge but then there is good viewing without environmental damage small price to pay.

Cleft Island, Wilsons Promontory in Australia

Cleft Island is a granite island located off the coast of Wilsons Promontory in the state of Victoria, in Australia. It is also recognized as Skull Rock, and belongs to a group of three islands called the “Anser Group”. It is one of the most scenic of all islands in Wilsons Promontory, and very beautiful, unspoiled and above all, is a tranquil place.  In the first look from some distance you may not think it is anything to write home about and that’s the beauty of it.  If you examine the island a little closer, you’ll soon see that the place is quite possibly perfect for an irredeemable scoundrel such as yourself. Indeed it looks like something from a hit movie script; a large stone, skull shaped rock rising halfway up from a deeply blue sea off an isolated stretch of coast.

The western side of the island has a massive cave with a grassy floor that was perhaps carved by the sea when the sea levels were much higher, thousands of years ago. Moreover, the cavern is 130 meters wide, 60 meters high and 60 meters deep. Hence at a certain angle, the island looks like a skull which is known as ” Skull Rock” and it is complete with a big cranium, an eye socket (the cave) and the bridge of a nose.  The history tells us, that the cave was once thought to be an ideal place for target practice by passing ships.There is in fact two large caves on the western side. Moreover, the roof of the smaller cave is about 25 meters above the sea and forms the floor of the upper larger cave, and it is well covered with soil and vegetation on its surface.

The island is practically unreachable with tall vertical cliffs and no place where a small boat could come ashore and anchor. Due to unreachable place, very few people have set foot on the island or explored the cave so far. Those who have, reportedly discovered cannon balls inside the cave. The Black-faced Cormorant birds are particularly, have taken advantage of Cleft Island’s isolation and inaccessibility to humans, by making the island its home. As intrepid but impulsive tourists have discovered, if you have a boat out to the island and start to circumnavigate it, then it’s secret is exposed.  Therefore, it is yet the handful who make it round the corner have never lived to tell the tale thanks to the piranha-bots we have in recent times had installed.

The Underground Coober Pedy is the Only “The Opal Capital of World”

Well, these days underground town is purely a unique idea. The Coober Pedy is a small mining town with a small population of just under 2,000. Coober Pedy is a town in northern South Australia, 846 kilometers north of Adelaide on the Stuart Highway. but it's also recognized "opal capital of the world" and has been constantly supplying most of the world's gem-quality opal since it was first founded in 1915. In this waterless environment, not too much doings goes on above ground and instead, the community exists in a network of tunnels underneath the desert earth, inside some 1,500 homes and dwellings they call their "dug-outs". Coober Pedy began attracting curious tourists in the 1980s when the first hotel was built - underground, of course. 

Moreover, besides the interest of subterranean sleeping though, the town boasts a network of underground shops, bars, museums and several other attractions to visit. Therefore, an average cave home at approximately 8 to 22 feet below ground level with modern amenities, numerous bedrooms, living area, kitchen, and bathroom can be excavated out of the rock for pretty much the same price as building a house above surface (excluding the air conditioning bills). These modern design homes have support pillars about 40 inches thick and natural air shafts for ventilation. Though, there's no sewage in underground Coober Bedy so kitchens and bathrooms are always preferred to construct above ground, basically the front rooms of the house, where the dug-out entrance lies. During the night time, you can head above ground for a game of nocturnal golf on Coober Bedy's infrequent grass-free desert golf course. After dark, players are relaxing to use glowing balls and a carry a small piece of “turf” around to use for teeing off.

Mesmerizing Australian Salt Ponds Look like Abstract Paintings

Shimmering Australian ponds pictured in stunning aerial photographs hardly to believe that these spectacular portraits are not watercolor paintings depicting otherworldly patterns. These stunning photographs are actually of crystallizers: shallow ponds in which concentrated brine evaporates leaving a 'crop' of salt crystals. These exclusives crystals were photographed by Simon Butterworth from a light aircraft flying 4,000 to 5,000 feet above the Useless Loop solar salt operation situated in Shark Bay, the westernmost point of mainland Australia.

The height was mainly vital in getting this flattened perspective, which was attained using a long focal length camera. Moreover, time and cloud cover also played a key role with the abstractness of the photographs heightened by a lack of shadow. Because the main reason that these crystals appear blue can in fact be attributed to the reflection of the sky. The tracks left by the salt harvesting machine account for the brushstroke patterns. The series, called “Project Blue Fields”, is part of a bigger project, Aesthetics of the Astonishing, which see the relationships between perception, expectation and reality, and was nominated for a Sony World Photographic Award in the Professional Landscape category.Source: Dailymail