Shell Beach (Western Australia)

The Shell Beach is a 40 km long coastal strip of Western Australia Shark Bay, which consists of an up to 10 -meter-thick layer of billions of cockles the type Fragum erugatum. It lines the L' Haridon Bight on the north east of the two great peninsulas of the area, which is also called Peron Peninsula.

With the south of the bay lying coasts of the Hamelin Pool Marine Nature Reserve where there are also large areas of shell beach, the length of the Shell Beach more than 100 km.

Formation

In the waters of Shark Bay Fragum erugatum is so strongly represented that the wind and waves in about 6000 years have washed up extraordinary amounts of shells. Only on the first 3-4 m beach that lie closest to the sea, the shells are loosely piled.

On the landward beach sections that are no longer washed by the water, the rain has calcium carbonate from the shells removed, leading to a fixed " cementing " of molluscs. The resulting biogenic sedimentary rock - called Coquina - was used until the 1950s as a building material. For this it has (shell quarries ), especially given shell quarries for the construction of the church and other buildings in Denham. In 1990, the Shark Bay Marine Park ( 7487 km ² ) and the adjacent Hamelin Pool Marine were ( 1320 km ²) furnished and explains the clam beaches to protected areas Nature Reserve. A show - quarry is reconstructed on Hamilton Pool; the removal of the rock is prohibited.

Access

Length sections of Shell Beach, which goes around the 20 km long peninsula between L' Haridon Bight and Hamelin Pool to the Cape Petit Point are inaccessible after by dense acacia bush land of the Denham - Hamelin Road, the only road connecting the mainland by the Peninsula Denham and Monkey Mia separately.

From this passage route there are only two access roads:

• In Nanga ( gas station and supply station ) at the narrowest point of the peninsula ( picnic area, hiking, info panel ) and
• At the Hamelin Telegraph Station ( Coquina documentation trail to a colony of stromatolites, which are among the oldest forms of life on earth).