Bungle Bungle Range: Purnululu National Park, Australia

Purnululu National Park is famous for its mountain range rocks, the Bungle Bungle range, resembling the hives of western Australia. Over 20 million years, these hills of sandstone forces of nature turned into a surreal maze of orange cones, decorated with black stripes and multi-coloured highlights. The name "Purnulu" in the language of the Australian aborigines means "sandstone".

Bungle Bungles

Bungle Bungles

Unique rounded rock towers consist of a mixture of sandstone and coarse pebbles and cobbles. The striped mountain of steel is the result of erosion. The dark bands are more permeable to the algae that bloom on the surface, while the bright ones consist mainly of iron and manganese species that are not amenable to external influence and have a bright orange hue. Cones that Bungle Bungle resemble more like alien ships than geological formations. Some unusual shape resembles the rock spine of a huge prehistoric animal. Surprisingly, for a long time, this natural miracle was known only to local Aboriginal tribal communities. Europeans discovered, once, over a region, that a plane was flying in the 1980s.

Once, over a region, a plane was flying with a group of directors. After a detailed analysis of the photographs and videos obtained from surveys, unexplored land in the state of Western Australia has become known worldwide. In 1987, the Purnululu National Park was established, and it was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2003. In the language of the tribe, the cue "Purnululu" means "sandstone".

Bungle Bungles Australia

The Bungle Bungles – as its original name – is a corruption of "bundle-bundle", which means "grass". During the rainy season, the Australian Aborigines used these unusual rocks as shelters. Not surprisingly, this rugged system, consisting of gorges, ravines, cliffs, domes, and natural mountain ranges, has evolved into a real gallery of petroglyphs. In addition, here is the burial of the tribe.

Conglomerates and sandstones make up these distinctive towers with beehive shapes. These rocks are primarily composed of boulders and pebbles and then combined together with finer material. The Red Basin saw the formation of these sedimentary structures between 375 and 350 million years ago, as active faults altered the landscape. pe. These domes were formed by the combined effects of wind from the Tanami Desert and rain over millions of years.

It is located in the eastern Kimberley region, on the plains bordering it. These ranges are made up of layers of dolomite and ancient seabeds. Satellite images of the Bungle Bungle Ranges clearly show a circular topographic feature measuring 7 kilometres in diameter. This feature is thought to be the remnant of an ancient meteorite impact crater. It is also known as the Piccaninny Crater.

Because of differences in the layers and sandstone, the conical rock formations have an unusual orange-grey banding. The layers that hold more water have darker bands. These are dark algal and cyanobacterial growths. Iron and manganese mineral deposits are found within the sandstone, which gives these layers their orange colour. An area of around 450 square kilometres covers the Bungle Bungles Range Formation.

First Image credit Rodney Skerman