In Western Australia, 3.5bn-year-old stromatolites built up the oxygen content of the Earth’s atmosphere to about 20%, giving the kiss of life to all that was to evolve.
By Marian McGuinness 18 January 2021
The sunroof was open and the tinted windows were wound down. It was the closest I could get to soaking in the surrounds of desert and sea under the cloud-sailing sky.
I was on Indian Ocean Drive heading a couple of hours north of Perth to Lake Thetis, on Western Australia’s wildcard Coral Coast. Like an M C Escher drawing, the landscape morphs from market gardens to limestone-spotted scrub, soundtracked with clattering windmills drawing water from the Yarragadee Aquifer formed during the Jurassic era. There were white-trunked eucalypts and punk-haired grass trees sprouting in their thousands, flocks of black cockatoos in raucous flight and, sadly, dozens of kangaroos that had ended their days as roadkill.