Australian Bush

By "bush" I mean outback, nothing to do with the leader of our country, even though he visited the day before we arrived ( btw: the cab driver from the airport told us that our "leader" had arrived the day before to which all of us replied " You mean our mis-leader?")



Anyway, we've been a week in the outback now an I thought I'd share some pics with you. We haven't gotten to the stuff that I expertise in yet but still seen some really cool stuff. Just to let you know there are 8 of us:

Simon, my soon-to-be boss, british as can be, and has tried to explain cricket and his love of sardines to me

Carlos, our Brazilian colleague, who insists on calling me "sweety", which, rather than being derogatory, makes me feel about 10, which isn't much better. Carlos also borrowed and lost my rock hammer somewhere in the Archean.

Jim, whose papers I have read and sited abot 50 times, the best true evaporite geologist/spectroscopist I know

Beatriz, Jim's wife and and Ecologist who used spectrocopy to identify plants. She has about a gazillion nature guides and can point out all the wildflowers, animals, scat etc to us.

Nathan, another JPLer and planetary scientist

Jeff - a total kook, think he knows way more than he does and is constantly trying to prove it - obviously rubbing me the wrong way right now

Ursala - the girl Jeff brought along and although she is a geochemist, obviously had no idea what she was signing on for and is very much regretting it. I like her.

And then there's me... the PhD student who is trying desperately to finish so she can accept the job working with these people and go to Brazil in the spring :)



Some Pics:




Imagine: Eucalyptus trees where they are supposed to be!




Marble Bar Chert - this is some the oldest rock on Earth at 3.5 Billion Years old. It is named Marble because it was mistaken as marble and according to one local the reason it is called "Marble Bar" is because they made the bar of the local pub out of it....






So the first picture is the some of the oldest rock, this is the oldest undisputed evidence for life on Earth at 3.45 BY these stromatilites were thought to form in shallow highly saline waters of the early Earth









Part of a mine cut at the Tom Price Mine where they mine iron ore out of banded iron formations (BIF)






Impact spherules (?) in the McCrae Shale





A cool lizard. Haven't seen a kangaroo yet :( but saw an emu!







Very cool deformation in Hamersley Gorge













BIF in Hamersley Gorge.
Hamersley Gorge - I wanted to go swim, but not enough time...






Nameless Mountain near Tom Price. Note the very red soil in the foreground. Pretty much everything I own is this color now.



Our trusty 4WD Budget rental in the bush








The Australian Bush looks a lot like Arizona except the rocks are older and the prickly things are different.