A bunch of Bungle Bungles

Australia seems a weird place to this visitor, perhaps more like some foreign planet with its strange flora, marsupials, and even land surface that feels unfamiliar. Close to two weeks bumping around the western and northern interior on dirt roads in 4WD bus/trucks yielded an insight: this is an ocean floor that rose up to be a continent. Unlike anywhere else I've been -- North America, South America, Europe, Himalayan Asia -- the shape of the land was NOT derived from a combination of glaciation and volcanic eruptions. This place, unimaginable years past, was a sea bottom that has since gone through the sculpting influence of wind and water.

And so you get the Bungle Bungles of Purnululu (Sandstone) National Park. (This link explains something about the geology of the place.) White Australia ("whitefellas" in polite local usage) didn't take notice of this 450 square kilometer mountain range until 1983; today the strange 900 foot high formations are a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Most of the range is off-limits to hiking, so we did what any good tourist would do: bought a flight in a tiny helicopter without doors (but good seat belts) to snap some pictures from above. Enjoy a few.

Oz is different.