Thrombolites of Lake Clifton, Western Australia

 

 

Hi, I am Hilary Wheater. I want to introduce you to an amazing ecological phenomenom, and one of the oldest forms of life on earth, the thrombolites of Lake Clifton, Western Australia

THE THROMBOLITES OF LAKE CLIFTON

Lake Clifton, south of Perth, Western Australia, is the home of the largest reef of living thrombolites in the southern hemisphere.

The thrombolites occur on the eastern shores of the lake stretching over 14 kms from the northern tip of the lake down to Deep-water channel. They are also to be found on the western shore south of Swan Pond.

 

Thrombolites are the homes of tiny microbes. Up to 25 different species of fauna have been identified from within the living rock forms of the thrombolites of Lake Clifton.

Lake Clifton is a salt lake but it is fed fresh water from an underground aquifer. This aquifer lies on a rock bed of limestone. The water of the

aquifer is heavily impregnated with calcium and carbonate ions.

Tiny microbes live in this lake. They don’t float in suspension in the water but they lie in a mat at the bottom of the lake. This mat is called a benthic microbial community.

The fresh water flows up from the aquifer into the lake pushing against the mat of microbes. These tiny microbes appear to have the most amazing ability to attach to the calcium and carbonate ions in the water and to use them to make themselves houses. These microbial houses in Lake Clifton are called thrombolites from the Greek work ‘thrombos’ a clot, because these microbialites are like large clots.

Over 25 different species of microbes were identified from a lump or rock taken from one of the thrombolites.

There are 11 lakes in the Yalgorup Lake System and most of the lakes have extinct microbial reefs. There would appear to be no longer any sign of life in these reefs.

What has caused these reefs to become extinct we do not know. Observation shows that the fresh water seeping up around these lakes is no longer above the reefs, indicating that the water level of the lakes has lowered over time. The microbes and thrombolites might have been left high and dry and just died from lack of water.

An alternative theory is that the lakes may have become more salty as they reduced in depth and that the microbes could no longer tolerate this high rate of salinity.

The only living thrombolites would appear to be on Lake Clifton but their days, too, could be numbered. They are now recognized as a threatened ecological species. A good deal of research is needed to be done on the thrombolites of Lake Clifton and the extinct reefs of the other lakes if the living thrombolites of Lake Clifton are not be lost to us.

For more information on the thrombolites of Lake Clifton, contact FRAGYLE through http://www.fragyle.org.au/ or fragyle@oceanbroadband.net.

 









Hello Midsomer

Midsomer  

 M…………s

 

Hello Midsomer

Hi Everyone. My name is Ben Jones, Detective Constable Ben Jones.

I am a trainee CID in the Police Force and have been posted for two years to a “rural outpost”.

My posting is a small, but picturesque, village in the centre of the green English countryside. Midsomer, the village is called.

Beautiful thatched cottages around the village green with gardens overflowing with flowers. There is one shop which is the meeting place for the locals. They congregate outside the shop in the morning and are still there talking away when it shuts in the evening.

There is a pub which serves a fair meal and if I want the high life, cinema, nightclub, I go into Corston which is only a few miles away. On Sunday we play cricket on the village green, and nearly every Saturday some local group, the Girl Guides, the Women’s Institute, the Cricket Club, hold a fair on the green. Everyone loves these and they flock in from miles around.

My boss is Inspector Barnaby and he lives in Midsomer with his wife, Joyce. They were terrific when I first came, putting me up until I found lodgings, feeding me regularly since then.

This is just one glorious little bit of paradise. I can see I shall be asking for an extension when the two years is up. Who could imagine such an idyllic life – and being paid for it!!

We sit in our office in the morning shuffling idly through papers. Down to the pub for lunch and a stroll round the green, a chat to any passing locals and back to the office again. What a glorious change to plodding the hard, cement streets and concrete buildings of inner London. 

I was enjoying a delightful dreamless sleep last Thursday when the peace was shattered by the raucous ringing of the phone beside my bed. I cursed quietly and looked at the clock. 3 am. Who on earth would be phoning me at this time? It was my boss. I was to get out of my bed and go down right away to a house at the end of the village.

The house was lit up like a department store. The front door was open.  I could see a door at the end of the corridor wide open and my boss standing just inside the room. He beckoned to me and when I reached the open door I could see a man sitting at a desk apparently sound asleep. He looked perfectly comfortable apart from a slight bloody scratch on his left cheekbone as if he had cut himself shaving. It was Giles Braithwaite, the local lawyer.

“What’s wrong?” I asked Barnaby. “Is he sick?”

“Very,” he replied. “He’s dead.”

I went cold from head to toe. I had never seen a dead person before. Plodding the London Streets I had seen drunks, and people bashed up and bleeding after a street brawl but I had not seen a single dead person.

I felt physically sick. My stomache heaved and nausea started rising up my throat.

“Suicide?” I asked Barnaby.

“I don’t think so,” he said, “It would appear he has been strangled,” pointing to a faint purplish tinge around Braithwaite’s throat.

“Who would do that?” I asked somewhat foolishly.

“That,” said Barnaby, “is what YOU are going to find out.”

Being the local lawyer Braithwaite probably knew everything about everybody. Anybody in the village might have had a good reason to get rid of him.

“Who found him?” I asked.

Barnaby indicated towards the kitchen. “His assistant, Iris Holman, had a phone call from him in the evening to come over as he had a client coming in late and wanted her to be there at the meeting.”

The next day I started my rounds of the village. “Where were you between the hours of…….? Did you see anybody go into………..did you notice anything unusual……..?”

It was three o’clock in the afternoon and I was on the fifth call when my telephone rang. It was Barnaby again. Would I drop everything and come round to Iris Holman’s cottage right away.

He was in the kitchen with Iris Holman and her next door neighbour. Iris was sitting in a chair by the kitchen table. She had a slight scratch on her left cheek. She was dead.

I ran outside and was violently sick in the privet hedge.

Two dead bodies in two days was more than my constitution could handle. I was a poor soul as I started on my rounds all over again. “Where were you……….did you see anyone…………..?” I was like a wooden puppet asking wooden puppet questions. I ate nothing all day, ready to throw up again at the mere sound of the word “dead”.

The next morning I woke ravenously hungry. I went down to the pub and Matty, the pub-owners wife made me a massive full English breakfast. Fortified and renewed I returned to work.

I was half way round the village and feeling nicely comfortable after a coffee and delicious home-made biscuits at my last port of call when my phone rang again. It was Barnaby and he was at the house of Frank Bishop, a Cockney ruffie who had made a mint sponsoring boxers. He had a boxing ring in a shed on his property and I went down quite often for a workout. “Come straight down to the boxing ring” Barnaby instructed.

Barnaby was standing by the ringside talking to Bishop’s trainer, Terry Molloy. Terry had given me several free hours of training and I liked him. I greeted them both cheerfully and they nodded back. It was then that I noticed Frank Bishop. He was sitting on a stool in a corner inside the ring. He had a red scratch on his cheek. He was dead.

All my lovely breakfast at the pub, plus the coffee and home-made biscuits, hit the floor in a fountain.

I went outside and leaned against the wall of the shed. What was with this place? A beautiful sleepy thatched village in the middle of rural England and three people were dead in so many days. I could understand maybe that someone might have wanted to get rid of the lawyer and his assistant if they knew more than was required, but what had Frank Bishop, a boxing promoter, done to anyone to deserve this?

The village only had half a dozen people left. Who was going to be next? They would all be dead in a week if they carried on at this rate.

This was crazy. At this rate it would be me next and then Barnaby.

No chance, I thought.  I am out of here.

I went back to my lodgings, packed my bags and hit the road.

Give me an inner London back alley any day. You can keep your pretty, sleepy little quaint villages. They are full of thugs and murderers!!

Good-bye Midsomer