Winter 2019 - OZ 15 Murphy’s Haystacks (Part 1) Soil

2019 - OZ  15 Murphy’s Haystacks (Part 1) Soil

When you think of Australia you must think in millions of years.

The Geology of Australia Includes Virtually All Known Rock Types and From All
Geographical Time Periods Spanning Over 3.8 Billion Years of the Earth's History

Unusual Flowers

It is not at all what the rest of the world is like. The more I dug into my surroundings, the more I realized how Australia is different.

We all know that the animal world is very unlike any other when we think of Australia.

Nowhere else do you find kangaroos!   

When it comes to people:  no other people used a boomerang for hunting.  No meaningful contact with outsiders for 40,000 years is being taught.

The plant life is different too, way different. Most of the plants in Australia are endemic to certain regions. Plants developed into the present day species over millennia.

Black Opal on the Left

No place else in the world can you find Opal Jewels like you find in Australia. Just see the chart of substrata on the continent to understand the complexity of what is Australia.

 
And all of that has to do with the soil in Australia; or the chemical composition of the soil in various sections of this continent. Or is it that time makes soil less fertile? Or that geology, the lay of the land, ultimately has a more profound long term effect than previously thought.

It is no accident that things are different in Australia; it goes back millions of years. It started with Geology (I believe), the beginning of this block of Earth. It started when the magma cooled down and left stones and rocks in its place.

Sand in the Cracks Dated at More Than 33,600 Years Old.

 

They Were Huge

And when you look at these Haystacks, you are looking at rock formations that were created about 150 million years ago. And the rocks you are looking at were at one time covered by about 10 meters of ‘soil’. I mean there was ‘soil’ on top of those stones, 10 meters on top of these stones!

The ‘soil’ we see today, the soil we walk on in Australia, is really a substratum of the ‘soil’ Australia had millions of years ago.

Naturally, even in Europe or the Americas, or any other continent we would have a different environment ‘if’ we lived on the ground as it is now, but 20 meters below the present surface.

 

Opal Mining

It is no accident that Australia has so many mines, that we harvest so many raw materials from its soil.  Australia has ‘strange’ soils today that do not support the growth of grass, trees, or plants as we know them; especially around the Nullarbor Plains, a more-or-less desert.

So, Oak Trees from Norway do not necessarily grow well in this part of Australia.

Bamboo needs a soil so that its roots can grow underground. It just would not work well in most of this part of Australia.

Dates, figs, or even just palm trees do not really do well on the Nullarbor Plain. The soil does not have the zinc, potassium, calcium, etc. the plants need.

No Idea What This Fruit Is

So all the plant life I saw is a bit different from the rest of the world, unless, of course, Plants were imported, then adapted and now strives or even ravages the country side, because the imported plant has no competition.

Ecology in Australia is a complicated subject, see the article Rain Forest, explaining some aspects of the Nullarbor Plains.

The Haystacks have an amusing history, read on how they got their names.  

But this article is a bit better; it talks more about the erosion that caused the stones to protrude.     

Modern research into Australia’s past brings forth a totally different picture than what was taught in schools. Stereotype beliefs are challenged and old superstitions might prevail but turn out to be wrong.

On the left side of an article I found, of ‘The Myth of the World’s Oldest Culture”, are more subjects that, if you want to read them, share some conflicting views of Australia today.