Wave Rock
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Wave Rock Western Australia |
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 Wave Rock
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| Coordinates | 32°26′38″S 118°53′53″E / 32.44389°S 118.89806°ECoordinates: 32°26′38″S 118°53′53″E / 32.44389°S 118.89806°E |
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Wave Rock is a natural rock formation that is shaped like a tall breaking ocean wave. The "wave" is about 14 m (46 ft) high and around 110 m (360 ft) long. It forms the north side of a solitary hill, which is known as "Hyden Rock". This hill, which is a granite inselberg, lies about 3 km (2 mi) east of the small town of Hyden and 296 km (184 mi) east-southeast of Perth, Western Australia. Wave Rock and Hyden Rock are part of a 160 ha (395-acre) nature reserve, Hyden Wildlife Park.
A wall lies above Wave Rock about halfway up Hyden Rock and follows the contours of the wall. It collects and funnels rainwater to a storage dam. The wall and dam were constructed in December 1928 by the Public Works Department for the original settlers of East Karlgarin District. Both were renovated in 1951 to increase water capacity for the Hyden Township. Such walls are common on many similar rocks in the Wheatbelt.
Wave Rock has cultural significance to Ballardong people. Local tribes believed that the rock was a creation of the Rainbow Serpent, and was created in his wake by dragging his swollen body over the land after he had consumed all of the water in the land. They respected this area as an icon of cultural learning; a moral from this Dream time tale was to be remembered for life. More than 140,000 tourists visit Wave Rock every year.
Hyden Rock, of which Wave Rock is part, consists of 2.63 billion year-old biotite K-feldspar porphyritic monzogranite that is part of the Yilgarn Craton. Hyden Rock is a granite inselberg, which consists of three domes. The central and western domes are separated by a deep valley, which is now occupied by a reservoir. The central and eastern domes are linked by a low platform. A multistage process of landform development created these domes. The initial step in the development of Hyden Rock was the subsurface alteration by weathering of granite bedrock beneath a lateritised land surface during the Cretaceous Period between 100–130 million years ago. Depending on the degree to which it was fractured by jointing, the granite bedrock underlying this surface was altered to varying depths beneath the land surface. This process formed underground "domes" of solid granite bedrock surrounded by deeply weathered, relatively loose, and disaggregated granite. Following separation of Australia and Antarctica and accompanying tilting of what became southwestern Australia, periodic erosion of the deeply weathered granite, which underlaid the surrounding land surface, exposed these buried solid bedrock domes over time as Hyden Rock.
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