Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Purnululu National Park Location Northern Territory, Australia Nearest City Darwin Latitude 17° 27' 47" S Longitude 128° 33' 51" E Area 239,723ha Date of Establishment 1987 Governing Body Department of Conservation and Land Management IUCN category II Purnululu National Park is in Western Australia, 2054km northeast of Perth. The nearest town is Kununurra. Access to the park by road is via Spring Creek Track, from the Great Northern Highway approximately 250km south of Kununarra, to the track's end at the visitor centre. The track is 53km long and is useable only in the dry season (about April 1 to December 31), and only by four-wheel-drive (4WD) vehicles. Safely negotiating it takes approximately 3 hours. Access by air is less demanding; helicopter flights are available, from Turkey Creek Roadhouse at Warmun, 187km south of Kununurra, and light aircraft, from Kununurra. Purnululu Purnululu is the name given to the sandstone area of the Bungle Bungle Range by the Kija Aboriginal people. The range, lying fully within the park, has elevations as high as 578 metres above sea level. It is famous for the sandstone domes, unusual and visually striking with their striping in alternating orange and grey bands. The banding of the domes is due to differences in clay content and porosity of the sandstone layers: the orange bands consist of oxidised iron compounds in layers that dry out too quickly for cyanobacteria to multiply; the grey bands are composed of cyanobacteria growing on the surface of layers of sandstone where moisture accumulates. External link Purnululu National Park See also: Protected areas of Western Australia This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.