Length: 1.4km
Duration: 0.5hrs
Grade: 2
Style: Circuit
Start: Hamelin Pool Telegraph Station
End: Hamelin Pool Telegraph Station

Location: Hamelin Pool
Closest Town:
Distance from CBD: 735km
State: WA
Latitude: -26.399727
Longitude: 114.165543

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Hamelin Pool...

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Boolagoorda Trail is a 1.4km, grade 2 circuit hike, located in Hamelin Pool, Western Australia. The hike should take approximately 0.5hrs to complete.

Hike Summary

The Boolagoorda Trail starts and ends at the Hamelin Pool Telegraph Station. It takes the visitor on an easy flat 1.4 kilometre loop walk to a 200 metre Boardwalk. From there you can experience the world’s oldest lifeforms, known as stromatolites, thriving in the shallow seas.

The Boolagoorda Trail offers the visitor a unique insight into ancient lifeforms as well as much more recent human activity. Near the trailhead is an assortment of station buildings including the Hamelin Pool Telegraph Station. Built in 1884, the station provided a vital link between Perth and Roebourne, until closure in the 1950s. It's worth paying a small fee for entry into the museum. Just beyond the trailhead is a quarry site where tiny shells compacted over time to form a huge mass. Early settlers cut out blocks which were solid enough for building materials. The old pearler restaurant and St Andrews Church in Denham are built of this shell grit. The trail's furtherest point is where people can get a glimpse of what life was like 3500 million years ago in the primeval seas. These stromatolites look like mushroom shaped rocks, but are infact colonies of cyanobacteria.

About the region

Hamelin Pool is home to the most diverse and abundant examples of stromatolites in the world. Also referred to as 'living fossils’, stromatolites are living representatives of life over 3500 million years ago when there was no other complex life on Earth.

A 200m boardwalk at Hamelin Pool provides excellent views of the stromatolites, microbialites and microbial mats. Please help protect these structures by staying on the boardwalk.

Nearby is the Old Hamelin Pool Telegraph Station which was built in 1884 as part of the communication line between Perth and Roebourne. The original building is now a museum housing many artefacts.

Getting there

Hamelin Pool is accessed from the Shark Bay Road 27km from the North West Coastal Highway. The road is sealed apart from a short unsealed two-wheel drive section to the carpark. It is an easy 750 metre return walk between the carpark and stromatolites.

The 1800 metre Boolagoorda loop trail goes through the old coquina quarry and telegraph station. You can also drive to the telegraph station which also has a commercial campground and tea rooms and offers tours of the telegraph station museum.