Page 253 - Mit dem Wohnwagen durch Australien

TERMITES
On the way from Darwin southwards, we stopped at some magnetic Termite mounds. They are not really magnetic,
but are exactly aligned from west to East. Termites are tremendously interesting little insects. A lot of times they are
referred to as white ants, which is wrong. Termites are mostly white because they live underground and in the dark,
but they are not ants. They related to cockroaches and are highly organised. They have a queen, workers and
soldiers and are much specialised. Some of the eat grass, others seeds and again others eat woods. Some of them
live under the ground and have only very small mounds above ground, and then there are the pancake termites
whose big mounds resemble a very messy stack of pancakes and can grow up to two meters in height and across.
Then, there are the megalomaniacs who build mounds up to 6 m in high and... the magnetic termites. These are
mostly in wetlands in full sunshine. The mounds are very wide but shallow and look like a triangle from the wide
side. The present theory of the scientists is that the termites build their mound for ambient control. They are on the
cool side in the west in the morning and then change over to the east side in the evening, when the sun is over the
yardarm. Because they build in marshes and wetlands they cannot go underground when it gets hot. Other termites
have intricate tunnels underground and only come above ground at night. Their mounds are sequestered in small
chambers which are filled with their preferred food. If someone damages a mound, the worker termites repair it
immediately. The mounds are made out of sand, grass and saliva and are very hard. In the Pioneer days the first
settlers ground the material and mixed it with water into fine cement and used this for the hard and durable floor of
their houses. Aborigines revere the termites and sometimes use the material of their mounds as medicine against
diarrhoea. Some clans have entombed high standing elders in termite mounds. The termites have covered their
body immediately and shortly after, nothing more was seen of it. The termite mounds can become as old as 150
years and older.

KIMBERLEYS
We have a lot planned in the Kimberleys, a series of hills in the North of W.A. The landscape is dotted with large
Boab or Bottle trees. They grow very slowly and can get a huge bottle night trunk. Some of them are hollow and can
be easily inhabited. First we drive to the neighbourhood of the Bungles Bungles or Purnululu as they are known to
the Aborigines. The outstanding features of the Bungles are the so called bee hives. These are rounded cone
shaped hills out of sandstone which have been formed by Glaciers, Water, Wind and the sun for millions of years.
The outer layer has oxidised a dark red brown. In between there are thin horizontal layers which have coloured dark
red on the outside. This gives the Bungles their typical beehive look. It is not as humid anymore as in Darwin, but all
the hotter for it. We shun no effort and discomfort to show you the most beautiful pictures to you in your comfortable
chairs back home. We get up at 4 am!!!, so that we can start walking after having driven the 120 km of corrugated
dirt road and do some of the way in the relative cool of the morning. The road, is a bit rough at the end of the season,
but well manageable with our Troopy 4x4. Only the thing with the cool in the morning was a bit of bummer. At 8 am
the thermometer already showed 30C and rising. Undaunted, we start our walk to the Cathedral Gorge and after
one hour are rewarded at the end with a large round rock arena complete with a cool pool in the middle. The second
hike led to the Echidna Chasm, a very narrow and high rock cleft. We hope that we will have some shade in the
gorge. There is some shade, but the whole way leads through the riverbed over rocks and large pebbles. It takes it
all out on us. At the end of the way there are some ladders to climb and then to sidle between large boulders and the
rock wall to the end of the chasm. We saw some remainders of the long ago rainforest which existed here when it
covered most of the land here millions of years ago. After the rocky drive back home, we were really knackered.
Nothing could hold us back the next morning to drive with our caravan to the next highlight of the Kimberleys, the
Wolfe Creed Meteorite Crater. This crater is more than 300’000 years old and the second largest in the world, after
the one in Arizona. It was discovered in 1947 by white explorers. At the time of impact, the approximately 50’000 ton
meteorite has mostly gotten up in a plume of steam and dust, but small pieces of it were found in 4 km distance.
What remains today is a large crater with a diameter of 85, which once was 120 m deep. Only 20 m depth remain,
since nature has slowly filled it with sand etc.

On some places the glass like surfaces can still be seen on some rocks, which were caused by the enormous
forces and heat. In normal years the landscape is gray, brown and dusty, however, since it rained a couple of times
last winter everything is in various shades of green. The view on the crater rim is spectacular, we see far over the flat
country at the edge of the Great Sandy Desert and nature is very still. We only hear the rustling of a Tata Lizard and
the wind in the tall grasses. Before you ask, yes we also got up at 4 am and drove 100 km over rutty, corrugated dirt
road.