It is day 6 of our WA trip. This basically means that we have just 2.5 days to spend in Western Australia until we fly back to Melbourne. The weather forecast for the rest of our journey is the same as yesterday: rain all the time. However, as we travel between peak-times (and it is not a school-holiday), we are quite flexible. So for today we have a long list of things to see and to do (subject to weather conditions).
The first item in our list is William Bay National Park in 15km west from Denmark famous with its Elephant Rocks and domed boulders of Greens Pool.
This map gives you an idea where William Bay National Park is located. As you can see it is not far away from Albany.
We parked our car and walked to the Greens Pool. It was very windy, but the water in the 'pool' was still:
As it name suggests, Elephant Rocks, located nearby (look for the 'Elephant Rocks' sign), look exactly like a herd of elephants, paddling in the shallow waters.
For the more adventurous, descend the staircase and make your way between two towering rocks onto the beach (watch the waves though, as it is difficult to escape a foot-wetting at high tide). These huge cracked elephant-shaped oval rocks make a stunning sight as they gaze out upon the Great Southern Ocean.
I always wondered how these rocks were formed. I googled it and found the following:
“The granitic rocks along the south coast of WA began to form about 1.5 billion years ago, making them among some of the oldest rocks in the world. As two continents collided together, the South Coast rocks became part of the Albany-Fraser Oregon. 600 million years ago this was a massive mountain range, greater than the Himalayas. The mountains have long since been eroded away, so the rocks we see today are those which were deep down in the base of the range, close to the Earth's mantle.
The immense pressures and temperatures these deep rocks were subjected to during the mountain building event caused them to melt and recrystalise, forming granitic gneisses and migmatites, though for simplicity's sake they're often just referred to as granites”.
The rocks are HUGE. If you look at these images you would probably find two people walking on top of them:
We could easily spend a day exploring these absolutely amazing rocks, but we had only an hour. Do not do the same, take a break to relax here!
Elephant Cove is a nice place to explore, especially on a sunrise/sunset, as you’ll get nice colours during a ‘magic’ hour. However, if you visit the cove during a day it won’t let you disappointed.
