Tunnel-Creek-Nationalpark
The Tunnel Creek National Park ( engl. Tunnel Creek National Park ) is located in the Kimberleyregion and is a popular tourist National Park in Western Australia. It is located about 1850 kilometers north-east of Perth and 470 kilometers east of Broome and 115 km north of Fitzroy Crossing. It covers 0.91 km ² and in 1992 was declared as a National Park.
Geology
The Tunnel Creek is part of the Napier Range, relic of a 350 million year old Devonian reef from which the Windjana Gorge and Geikie Gorge which have emerged.
The history consists of two stages: the first stage is to raise the Devonian sea floor about 250 million years ago, with subsequent formation of limestone. The reef was covered by younger sedimentary rocks. For about 20 million years ago there was a second increase with subsequent erosion of younger rocks, so that the underlying older limestone, the calcareous algae, stromatoporoids and corals had formed, again came to the fore.
The special feature of the Tunnel Creek - a tributary of the Lennard River, which has spawned the Windjana Gorge - is his subterranean course for a distance of about 750 m. This tunnel is the erosion work of the small creek which gave rise to a 9-15 m wide cave over the millennia, by solving the lime. By fine cracks the water has soaked into the rock and has the cavities formed. The Mimbi Caves, a larger, heavier accessible cave system about 80 km south of Fitzroy Crossing are geologically related and originated in the same way.
Stalactite formations - stalactites and stalagmites - shape the structure of the tunnel.
History
End of the 19th century, the tunnel made history. Jandamarra, a Bunuba - Aboriginal, made violent resistance to the European settlement of Australia. He managed to keep hidden in the tunnel 2.5 years before the armed white settlers and the police.
Jandamarra had been shot in the Windjana Gorge on November 16, 1894 at Pigeon 's Rock and seriously injured; his pursuers thought he was dead, but because he always escaped by a rock fall in the tunnel to the outside, to be seen there and then could disappear miraculously again, and held it his spirit immortal. His reputation was legendary and it was believed that only could defeat him, another mythical Aboriginal warrior.
The police recruited in their services one Aboriginal tracker named Micki from the Pilbara, the magical powers were attributed. Micki presented Jandamarra near the tunnel entrance and shot him on April 1, 1897. Approximately 100 m from the western end of the limestone tunnel away is a monument to Jandamarra.
Fauna
Living in the tunnel, in the larger colonies of Fledertieren, including bats and the Australian ghost bat, with sufficient water level freshwater crocodiles have been seen.
Tourist infrastructure
Access from the north runs from Derby on the Gibb River Road and the unpaved also unpaved Fairfield Leopold Downs Road; a branch road leads to about 55 km into the National Park. From the South ( Fitzroy Crossing ) Fairfield Leopold Downs Road branches off after about 30 miles from the Great Northern Highway.
One accompanied by documentation boards trail leads to the tunnel entrance, where some boulders are to climb. With flashlight, as the tunnel is passable in the dry season between April and November until its output to the east; in the remaining pools of the brook the water reaches even then sometimes up to the waist. The ceiling collapse brought something natural light about halfway down the track. Aboriginal rock art are just difficult to see.
The national park is only open during the day and no camping facilities.
There exist hardly walk ways or paths outside the tunnel crossing.
During the rainy season of the National Park is usually closed and the tunnel crossing impossible in high water.