Elephant Rocks - William Bay NP - Dec 2009

Elephant Rocks is a sheltered beach in

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

, a few hundred metres east of

Greens Pool Greens Pool is a sandy white beach with boulders on the south coast of Western Australia between Denmark and Walpole. This sheltered area is part of William Bay National Park and has a sandy white beach ringed by large granite boulders that p ...

. It is about from

Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

, in

William Bay National Park William Bay National Park is a national park in the Great Southern (Western Australia), Great Southern region of Western Australia, southeast of Perth and between the towns of Denmark, Western Australia, Denmark and Walpole, Western Australia, ...

. Its name is derived from a series of exposed rocks, which from several angles resembles a herd of elephants. At the Elephant Rocks, people can bushwalk, fish, snorkel and swim.

Formation

The Elephant Rocks are granite boulders that resemble a herd of elephants, extending at least 100 meters out to the sea along the coast between

and Madfish Bay. As one of the oldest rocks in the world, the granite rocks along the south coast of Western Australia started forming around 1.5 billion years ago. The collision of two continents led to the integration of various rock formations part of the Albany-Fraser orogeny. 600 million years ago, the region was home to a mountain range that exceeded the height of the Himalayas. The erosion of the rocks altered the landscape, exposing the rocks located deep within the mountain's foundation, close to the Earth's mantle. The deep rocks were subject to the pressures and temperatures causing them to melt and recrystallize, forming granites and migmatites.

References

External links

Denmark Tourist Bureau
* {{cite web , url= http://www.dec.wa.gov.au/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,725/ , title= Discover Green's Pool & Elephant Rocks – William Bay NP (371.57 Kb) , access-date= 24 January 2010 , archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110320190809/http://www.dec.wa.gov.au/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,725/ , archive-date= 20 March 2011 , url-status= dead Rock formations of Western Australia Beaches of Western Australia South coast of Western Australia