Buley Rockhole lies in the Litchfield National Park and is approximately 130km's southwest of Darwin near the town of Batchelor and covers around 1,500 sq km's.
The natural features of Litchfield National Park include sandstone ranges, constantly flowing waterfalls and rivers, an abundance of plant and animal life and a variety of easily accessible habitats. The Park provides unlimited opportunities to experience appreciate and learn about nature. Educational opportunities range from plant and animal identification and habitat studies to broader themes including the flows and cycles of life in natural ecosystems.
Many of the river and creek systems are unique because they flow all year round. This constant flow of water is due largely to the sandstone, which forms the Tabletop Range. The sandstone is very porous and during the wet season, when rain is plentiful, it acts much like a sponge soaking up large volumes of water. In the dry season water seeps from the sandstone and continually fills the creeks and rivers until the next rains. The constantly flowing rivers and creeks in Litchfield have allowed large populations of many common riverine plants and animals to become well established.
Water is the Key During the wet season rainwater soaks deep into the sandstone rock of the Tabletop Range. It flows slowly through the rock and re-emerges as trickling springs scattered along the edge of the Range. Many of the springs flow all year round. Above the level of the springs plants find little moisture in the upper soil and must rely on deep, penetrating roots to search for much needed water. Below the springs water is plentiful and in some places saturates the upper soil. These conditions suit fast growing plants like palms and ferns. So it is really wet season water that keeps the palms going over the long baking Dry.
Sandstone (sometimes known as arenite) is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains. Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any color, but the most common colors are tan, brown, yellow, red, grey, pink, white and black. Since sandstone beds often form highly visible cliffs and other topographic features, certain colors of sandstone have been strongly identified with certain regions.
Sandstone
Rock formations that are primarily composed of sandstone usually allow percolation of water and other fluids and are porous enough to store large quantities, making them valuable aquifers and petroleum reservoirs. Fine-grained aquifers, such as sandstones, are more apt to filter out pollutants from the surface than are rocks with cracks and crevices, such as limestone or other rocks fractured by seismic activity.
Q1 Describe the rock pools in your own words. How many can you count?
Q2 Describe texture of the rocks at the edge of a pool? (Example, Smooth / Rough / Pebbles).
Q3 What is the water condition like? (Example, Colour / Flow).
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