Western Australia
Western Australia is a state occupying the entire western third 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, South Australia to the south-east. Western Australia is Australia's largest state, with a total land area of 2,529,875 square kilometres, the second-largest country subdivision in the world, surpassed only by Russia's Sakha Republic; the state has about 2.6 million inhabitants – around 11 percent of the national total – of whom the vast majority live in the south-west corner, 79 per cent of the population living in the Perth area, leaving the remainder of the state sparsely populated. The first European visitor to Western Australia was the Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog, who visited the Western Australian coast in 1616; the first European settlement of Western Australia occurred following the landing by Major Edmund Lockyer on 26 December 1826 of an expedition on behalf of the New South Wales colonial government.
He established a convict-supported military garrison at King George III Sound, at present-day Albany, on 21 January 1827 formally took possession of the western third of the continent for the British Crown. This was followed by the establishment of the Swan River Colony in 1829, including the site of the present-day capital, Perth. York was the first inland settlement in Western Australia. Situated 97 kilometres east of Perth, it was settled on 16 September 1831. Western Australia achieved responsible government in 1890 and federated with the other British colonies in Australia in 1901. Today, its economy relies on mining, agriculture and tourism; the state produces 46 per cent of Australia's exports. Western Australia is the second-largest iron ore producer in the world. Western Australia is bounded to the east by longitude 129°E, the meridian 129 degrees east of Greenwich, which defines the border with South Australia and the Northern Territory, bounded by the Indian Ocean to the west and north.
The International Hydrographic Organization designates the body of water south of the continent as part of the Indian Ocean. The total length of the state's eastern border is 1,862 km. There are 20,781 km including 7,892 km of island coastline; the total land area occupied by the state is 2.5 million km2. The bulk of Western Australia consists of the old Yilgarn craton and Pilbara craton which merged with the Deccan Plateau of India and the Karoo and Zimbabwe cratons of Southern Africa, in the Archean Eon to form Ur, one of the oldest supercontinents on Earth. In May 2017, evidence of the earliest known life on land may have been found in 3.48-billion-year-old geyserite and other related mineral deposits uncovered in the Pilbara craton. Because the only mountain-building since has been of the Stirling Range with the rifting from Antarctica, the land is eroded and ancient, with no part of the state above 1,245 metres AHD. Most of the state is a low plateau with an average elevation of about 400 metres low relief, no surface runoff.
This descends sharply to the coastal plains, in some cases forming a sharp escarpment. The extreme age of the landscape has meant that the soils are remarkably infertile and laterised. Soils derived from granitic bedrock contain an order of magnitude less available phosphorus and only half as much nitrogen as soils in comparable climates in other continents. Soils derived from extensive sandplains or ironstone are less fertile, nearly devoid of soluble phosphate and deficient in zinc, copper and sometimes potassium and calcium; the infertility of most of the soils has required heavy application by farmers of fertilizers. These have resulted in damage to bacterial populations; the grazing and use of hoofed mammals and heavy machinery through the years have resulted in compaction of soils and great damage to the fragile soils. Large-scale land clearing for agriculture has damaged habitats for native fauna; as a result, the South West region of the state has a higher concentration of rare, threatened or endangered flora and fauna than many areas of Australia, making it one of the world's biodiversity "hot spots".
Large areas of the state's wheatbelt region have problems with dryland salinity and the loss of fresh water. The southwest coastal area has a Mediterranean climate, it was heavily forested, including large stands of karri, one of the tallest trees in the world. This agricultural region is one of the nine most bio-diverse terrestrial habitats, with a higher proportion of endemic species than most other equivalent regions. Thanks to the offshore Leeuwin Current, the area is one of the top six regions for marine biodiversity and contains the most southerly coral reefs in the world. Average annual rainfall varies from 300 millimetres at the edge of the Wheatbelt region to 1,400 millimetres in the wettest areas near Northcliffe, but from November to March, evaporation exceeds rainfall, it is very dry. Plants are adapted to this as well as the extreme poverty of all soils; the central two-thirds of the state is sparsely inhabited. The only significant economic activity is mining. Annual rainfall averages less than 300 millimetres, most of which occurs in sporadic torrential falls related to cyclone events in summer.
An exception to this is
Granite
Granite is a common type of felsic intrusive igneous rock, granular and phaneritic in texture. Granites can be predominantly white, pink, or gray depending on their mineralogy; the word "granite" comes from the Latin granum, a grain, in reference to the coarse-grained structure of such a holocrystalline rock. Speaking, granite is an igneous rock with between 20% and 60% quartz by volume, at least 35% of the total feldspar consisting of alkali feldspar, although the term "granite" is used to refer to a wider range of coarse-grained igneous rocks containing quartz and feldspar; the term "granitic" means granite-like and is applied to granite and a group of intrusive igneous rocks with similar textures and slight variations in composition and origin. These rocks consist of feldspar, quartz and amphibole minerals, which form an interlocking, somewhat equigranular matrix of feldspar and quartz with scattered darker biotite mica and amphibole peppering the lighter color minerals; some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic.
A granitic rock with a porphyritic texture is known as a granite porphyry. Granitoid is a descriptive field term for lighter-colored, coarse-grained igneous rocks. Petrographic examination is required for identification of specific types of granitoids; the extrusive igneous rock equivalent of granite is rhyolite. Granite is nearly always massive and tough; these properties have made granite a widespread construction stone throughout human history. The average density of granite is between 2.65 and 2.75 g/cm3, its compressive strength lies above 200 MPa, its viscosity near STP is 3–6·1019 Pa·s. The melting temperature of dry granite at ambient pressure is 1215–1260 °C. Granite has poor primary permeability overall, but strong secondary permeability through cracks and fractures if they are present. Granite is classified according to the QAPF diagram for coarse grained plutonic rocks and is named according to the percentage of quartz, alkali feldspar and plagioclase feldspar on the A-Q-P half of the diagram.
True granite contains both alkali feldspars. When a granitoid is devoid or nearly devoid of plagioclase, the rock is referred to as alkali feldspar granite; when a granitoid contains less than 10% orthoclase, it is called tonalite. A granite containing both muscovite and biotite micas is called two-mica granite. Two-mica granites are high in potassium and low in plagioclase, are S-type granites or A-type granites. A worldwide average of the chemical composition of granite, by weight percent, based on 2485 analyses: Granite containing rock is distributed throughout the continental crust. Much of it was intruded during the Precambrian age. Outcrops of granite tend to form rounded massifs. Granites sometimes occur in circular depressions surrounded by a range of hills, formed by the metamorphic aureole or hornfels. Granite occurs as small, less than 100 km2 stock masses and in batholiths that are associated with orogenic mountain ranges. Small dikes of granitic composition called aplites are associated with the margins of granitic intrusions.
In some locations coarse-grained pegmatite masses occur with granite. Granite is more common in continental crust than in oceanic crust, they are crystallized from felsic melts which are less dense than mafic rocks and thus tend to ascend toward the surface. In contrast, mafic rocks, either basalts or gabbros, once metamorphosed at eclogite facies, tend to sink into the mantle beneath the Moho. Granitoids have crystallized from felsic magmas that have compositions near a eutectic point. Magmas are composed of minerals in variable abundances. Traditionally, magmatic minerals are crystallized from the melts that have separated from their parental rocks and thus are evolved because of igneous differentiation. If a granite has a cooling process, it has the potential to form larger crystals. There are peritectic and residual minerals in granitic magmas. Peritectic minerals are generated through peritectic reactions, whereas residual minerals are inherited from parental rocks. In either case, magmas will evolve to the eutectic for crystallization upon cooling.
Anatectic melts are produced by peritectic reactions, but they are much less evolved than magmatic melts because they have not separated from their parental rocks. The composition of anatectic melts may change toward the magmatic melts through high-degree fractional crystallization. Fractional crystallisation serves to reduce a melt in iron, titanium and sodium, enrich the melt in potassium and silicon – alkali feldspar and quartz, are two of the defining constituents of granite; this process operates regardless of the origin of parental magmas to granites, regardless of their chemistry. The composition and origin of any magma that differentiates into granite leave certain petrological evidence as to what the granite's parental rock was; the final texture and composition of a granite are distinctive as to its parental rock. For instance, a granite, derived from partial melting of meta
Banksia
Banksia is a genus of around 170 species in the plant family Proteaceae. These Australian wildflowers and popular garden plants are recognised by their characteristic flower spikes and fruiting "cones" and heads. Banksias range in size from prostrate woody shrubs to trees up to 30 metres tall, they are found in a wide variety of landscapes. Heavy producers of nectar, banksias are a vital part of the food chain in the Australian bush, they are an important food source for all sorts of nectarivorous animals, including birds, rats, stingless bees and a host of invertebrates. Furthermore, they are of economic importance to Australia's cut flower industries; however these plants are threatened by a number of processes including land clearing, frequent burning and disease, a number of species are rare and endangered. Banksias grow as trees or woody shrubs. Trees of the largest species, B. integrifolia and B. seminuda grow over 15 metres tall, some grow to standing 30 metres tall. Banksia species that grow as shrubs are erect, but there are several species that are prostrate, with branches that grow on or below the soil.
The leaves of Banksia vary between species. Sizes vary from the narrow, 1–1½ centimetre long needle-like leaves of B. ericifolia, to the large leaves of B. grandis, which may be up to 45 centimetres long. The leaves of most species have serrated edges. Leaves are arranged along the branches in irregular spirals, but in some species they are crowded together in whorls. Many species have differing adult leaves; the flowers are arranged in flower spikes or capitate flower heads. The character most associated with Banksia is the flower spike, an elongated inflorescence consisting of a woody axis covered in tightly-packed pairs of flowers attached at right angles. A single flower spike contains hundreds or thousands of flowers. Not all Banksia have an elongate flower spike, however: the members of the small Isostylis complex have long been recognised as Banksias in which the flower spike has been reduced to a head. Dryandra, they have capitate flower heads rather than spikes. Banksia flowers are a shade of yellow, but orange, red and violet flowers occur.
The colour of the flowers is determined by the colour of the perianth parts and the style. The style is much longer than the perianth, is trapped by the upper perianth parts; these are released over a period of days, either from top to bottom or from bottom to top. When the styles and perianth parts are different colours, the visual effect is of a colour change sweeping along the spike; this can be most spectacular in B. prionotes and related species, as the white inflorescence in bud becomes a brilliant orange. In most cases, the individual flowers are thin saccate in shape. Multiple flower spikes can form; this is most seen in Banksia marginata and B. ericifolia. As the flower spikes or heads age, the flower parts dry up and may turn shades of orange, tan or dark brown colour, before fading to grey over a period of years. In some species, old flower parts are lost. Old flower spikes are referred to as "cones", although they are not technically cones according to the botanical definition of the term: cones only occur in conifers and cycads.
Despite the large number of flowers per inflorescence, only a few of them develop fruit, in some species a flower spike will set no fruit at all. The fruit of Banksia is a woody follicle embedded in the axis of the inflorescence. In many species, the resulting structure is a massive woody structure called a cone; each follicle consists of two horizontal valves that enclose the seeds. The follicle opens to release the seed by splitting along the suture, in some species each valve splits too. In some species the follicles open as soon as the seed is mature, but in most species most follicles open only after stimulated to do so by bushfire; each follicle contains one or two small seeds, each with a wedge-shaped papery wing that causes it to spin as it falls to the ground. Specimens of Banksia were first collected by Sir Joseph Banks and Dr Daniel Solander, naturalists on the Endeavour during Lieutenant James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific Ocean. Cook landed on Australian soil for the first time on 29 April 1770, at a place that he named Botany Bay in recognition of "the great quantity of plants Mr Banks and Dr Solander found in this place".
Over the next seven weeks and Solander collected thousands of plant specimens, including the first specimens of a new genus that would be named Banksia in Banks' honour. Four species were present in this first collection: B. serrata, B. integrifolia, B. ericifolia and B. robur. In June the ship was careened at Endeavour River; the genus Banksia was described and named by Carolus Linnaeus the Younger in his April 1782 publication Supplementum Plantarum.
Banksia pulchella
The Teasel Banksia is a species of small shrub in the plant genus Banksia. It occurs on the south coast of Western Australia from Fitzgerald River National Park east to Israelite Bay, it was first collected by Robert Brown from Lucky Bay on the south coast of Western Australia in January 1802, published by him in 1810. Seeds do not require any treatment, take 17 to 48 days to germinate. George, Alex S.. "The Genus Banksia L.f.". Nuytsia. 3: 239–473. George, Alex. "Banksia". In Wilson, Annette. Flora of Australia: Volume 17B: Proteaceae 3: Hakea to Dryandra. CSIRO Publishing / Australian Biological Resources Study. Pp. 175–251. ISBN 0-643-06454-0. Taylor, Anne; the Banksia Atlas. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. ISBN 0-644-07124-9. "Banksia pulchella R. Br". Flora of Australia Online. Department of the Environment and Heritage, Australian Government. "Banksia pulchella R. Br". FloraBase. Western Australian Government Department of Parks and Wildlife. "Banksia pulchella R. Br". Australian Plant Name Index, IBIS database.
Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research, Australian Government
Cape Arid National Park
Cape Arid National Park is an Australian national park located in Western Australia, 731 kilometres southeast of Perth. The park is situated 120 kilometres east of Esperance and lies on shore from the eastern end of the Recherche Archipelago; the bay at its eastern side is Israelite Bay, a locality mentioned in Bureau of Meteorology weather reports as a geographical marker. The western end is known as Duke of Orleans Bay, its coastline is defined by Cape Arid, a bay called Sandy Bight and, further east, Cape Pasley. The first European to discover the area was the French Admiral Bruni D'Entrecasteaux in 1792 and he named it Cap Aride. Pioneer graziers arrived in the area in the 1870s and the ruins of homesteads and buildings as well as gravesites can be found near Pine Hill and Thomas Fishery. Bay whaling was conducted by Thomas Sherratt at Barrier Anchorage in the 1870s. John Thomas seems to have had a bay whaling operation in the 1860s at Thomas's Fishery; the area is composed of sandy beaches and rocky headlands to the south with low granite hills extending to the north to join the jagged Russell Range, composed of pre-cambrian quartzite.
The highest point of the park is Tower Peak, located within the Range, which reaches a height of 594 metres. The eastern boundary of the park joins the western side of Nuytsland Nature Reserve. Sand-plains that are rich in flora surround the hill areas. A wide variety of habitat exists within the park which supports a wide variety of fauna; the park is an important site for the bird life in Western Australia. It is home to over 160 species of birds including some that are restricted; some of the birds found in the park include: the western ground parrot, the Australasian bittern, Carnaby's cockatoo and Cape Barren geese. Fauna that can be found include the western brush wallaby, the southern bush rat, many small marsupial predators and a variety of reptiles and amphibians. A rare and primitive species of ant of the genus Nothomyrmecia is thought to inhabit the area. Vegetation found within the park is on young dune systems that have large communities of coastal heath with smaller systems of yate, banksia and mallee.
Species of orchid and ferns exist near Mount Ragged including a small population of the sticky-tail flower. Many walk trails can be found in the park, including the Len Otte Nature Trail, Tagon Coastal Trail, Boolenup Walk Trail and walks up both Mount Ragged and Mount Arid; the most accessible campsite is at Thomas River with conventional drive access, barbecues and water tanks. Other campsites at Mount Ragged, Poison Creek and Deal Creek are only accessible by four-wheel drive vehicles. Protected areas of Western Australia
Barbecue
Barbecue or barbeque is a cooking method, a style of food, a name for a meal or gathering at which this style of food is cooked and served. Barbecue can refer to the cooking method itself, the meat cooked this way, the cooking apparatus/machine used, or to a type of social event featuring this type of cooking. Barbecuing is done outdoors by smoking the meat over wood or charcoal. Restaurant barbecue may be cooked in specially-designed brick or metal ovens. Barbecue is practiced in many areas of the world and there are numerous regional variations. Barbecuing techniques include smoking, roasting or baking and grilling; the technique for which it is named involves cooking using smoke at low temperatures and long cooking times. Baking uses an oven to convection cook with moderate temperatures for an average cooking time of about an hour. Braising combines direct, dry heat charbroiling on a ribbed surface with a broth-filled pot for moist heat. Grilling is done over direct, dry heat over a hot fire for a few minutes.
The English word "barbecue" and its cognates in other languages come from the Spanish word barbacoa. Etymologists believe this to be derived from barabicu found in the language of the Arawak people of the Caribbean and the Timucua people of Florida; the Oxford English Dictionary traces the word to La Hispaniola and translates it as a "framework of sticks set upon posts". Gonzalo Fernández De Oviedo y Valdés, a Spanish explorer, was the first to use the word "barbecoa" in print in Spain in 1526 in the Diccionario de la Lengua Española of the Real Academia Española. After Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, the Spaniards found Tainos roasting meat over a grill consisting of a wooden framework resting on sticks above a fire; the flames and smoke enveloped the meat, giving it a certain flavor. Traditional barbacoa involves digging a hole in the ground and placing some meat—usually a whole lamb—above a pot so the juices can be used to make a broth, it is covered with maguey leaves and coal, set alight.
The cooking process takes a few hours. Olaudah Equiano, an African abolitionist, described this method of roasting alligators among the Mosquito People on his journeys to Cabo Gracias a Dios in his narrative The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. Linguists have suggested the word barbacoa migrated from the Caribbean and into other languages and cultures. In the form barbacado, the term was used in English in 1648 by the supposed Beauchamp Plantagenet in the tract A description of the province of New Albion: "the Indians in stead of salt doe barbecado or dry and smoak fish". According to the OED, the first recorded use of the word barbecue in English was a verb in 1661, in Edmund Hickeringill's Jamaica Viewed: "Some are slain, And their flesh forthwith Barbacu'd and eat"; the word barbecue was published in English in 1672 as a verb from the writings of John Lederer, following his travels in the North American southeast in 1669-70. The first known use of the word as a noun was in 1697 by the British buccaneer William Dampier.
In his New Voyage Round the World, Dampier wrote, "... and lay there all night, upon our Borbecu's, or frames of Sticks, raised about 3 foot from the Ground". Samuel Johnson's 1756 dictionary gave the following definitions: "To Barbecue – a term for dressing a whole hog" "Barbecue – a hog dressed whole"While the standard modern English spelling of the word is barbecue, variations including barbeque and truncations such as bar-b-q or BBQ may be found; the spelling barbeque is given in the Oxford Dictionaries as a variant. In the southeastern United States, the word barbecue is used predominantly as a noun referring to roast pork, while in the southwestern states cuts of beef are cooked; because the word barbecue came from native groups, Europeans gave it "savage connotations." This association with barbarians and "savages" is strengthened by Edmund Hickeringill's work Jamaica Viewed: with All the Ports and their Several Soundings and Settlements through its descriptions of cannibalism. However, according to Andrew Warnes, there is little proof that Hickeringill's tale of cannibalism in the Caribbean is remotely true.
Another notable false depiction of cannibalistic barbecues appears in Theodor de Bry's Great Voyages, which in Warnes's eyes, "present smoke cookery as a custom quintessential to an underlying savagery... that everywhere contains within it a potential for cannibalistic violence." Today, those in the U. S. associate barbecue with "classic Americana." In American English usage, grilling refers to a fast process over high heat while barbecuing refers to a slow process using indirect heat or hot smoke, similar to some forms of roasting. In a typical U. S. home grill, food is cooked on a grate directly over hot charcoal, while in a U. S. barbecue the coals are dispersed at a significant distance from the grate. In British usage, barbecuing refers to a fast cooking process done directly over high heat, while grilling refers to cooking under a source of direct, moderate-to-high heat—known in the United States as broiling, its South American versions are the Argentine asado. In the Southern United States, barbecues involved the cooking of pork.
During the 19th century, pigs were a low-maintenance food source that could be released to forage in woodlands. When food or meat supplies were low, these semi-wild pigs could be caught and eaten. Accor
Toilet
A toilet is a piece of hardware used for the collection or disposal of human urine and feces. In other words: "Toilets are sanitation facilities at the user interface that allow the safe and convenient urination and defecation". Toilets can be without flushing water, they can be set up for a squatting posture. Flush toilets are connected to a sewer system in urban areas and to septic tanks in less built-up areas. Dry toilets are connected to a pit, removable container, composting chamber, or other storage and treatment device. Toilets are made of ceramic, plastic, or wood. In private homes, the toilet, bath, or shower may be in the same room. Another option is to have one room for body washing and a separate room for the toilet and handwashing sink. Public toilets consist of one or more toilets. Portable toilets or chemical toilets may be brought in for temporary gatherings. Many poor households in developing countries use basic, unhygienic toilets, for example simple pit latrines and bucket toilets which are placed in outhouses.
Globally, nearly one billion people have no access to a toilet at all, are forced to do open defecation. Diseases transmitted via the fecal-oral route or via water, such as cholera and diarrhea, can be spread by open defecation, they can be spread by unsafe toilets which cause pollution of surface water or groundwater. Sanitation has been a concern from the earliest stages of human settlements; the Sustainable Development Goal Number 6 calls for "adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation by 2030". The number of different types of toilets used on a worldwide level is large. Toilet types can be grouped by: Having a water seal or not Being used in a sitting or squatting position Being located at a household level or in public People use different toilet types based on the country that they are in. In developing countries, access to toilets is related to people's socio-economic status. Poor people in low-income countries have no toilets at all and resort to open defecation instead.
This is part of the sanitation crisis which international initiatives such as World Toilet Day draw attention to. A typical flush toilet is a ceramic bowl connected on the "up" side to a cistern that enables rapid filling with water, on the "down" side to a drain pipe that removes the effluent; when a toilet is flushed, the sewage should flow into a septic tank or into a system connected to a sewage treatment plant. However, in many developing countries, this treatment step does not take place; the water in the toilet bowl is connected to a pipe shaped like an upside-down U. One side of the U channel is arranged as a siphon tube longer; the siphon tube connects to the drain. The bottom of the drain pipe limits the height of the water in the bowl before it flows down the drain; the water in the bowl acts as a barrier to sewer gas entering the building. Sewer gas escapes through a vent pipe attached to the sewer line; the amount of water used by conventional flush toilets makes up a significant portion of personal daily water usage.
However, modern low flush toilet designs allow the use of much less water per flush. Dual flush toilets allow the user to select between a flush for urine or feces, saving a significant amount of water over conventional units; the flush handle on these toilets is pushed up for one kind of flush and down for the other. Another design is to have one for urination and the other for defecation. In some places, users are encouraged not to flush after urination. Flushing toilets can be plumbed to use greywater rather than potable water; some modern toilets pressurize the water in the tank, which initiates flushing action with less water usage. Another variant is the pour-flush toilet; this type of flush toilet has no cistern but is flushed manually with a few liters of a small bucket. The flushing can use as little as 2–3 litres; this type of toilet is common in many Asian countries. The toilet can be connected to one or two pits, in which case it is called a "pour flush pit latrine" or a "twin pit pour flush to pit latrine".
It can be connected to a septic tank. Flush toilets on ships are flushed with seawater. "High-tech" toilets, which can be found in countries like Japan, include features such as automatic-flushing mechanisms. Others include medical monitoring features such as urine and stool analysis and the checking of blood pressure and blood sugar; some toilets have automatic lid operation, heated seats, deodorizing fans, or automated replacement of paper toilet-seat-covers. Interactive urinals have been developed in several countries; the "Toylet", produced by Sega, uses pressure sensors to detect the flow of urine and translates that into on-screen action. Astronauts on the International Space Station use a space toilet with urine diversion which can recover potable water. A vacuum toilet is a flush toilet that requires little flushing water and is connected to a vacuum sewer system. For example, they are used on trains. Many types of toilets without a water seal (also
Cape Le Grand National Park travel guide from Wikivoyage
