Frozen in
stone … in just decades
by Jonathan O’Brien
Cape Leeuwin is a wild, beautiful and windy place, the most
south-westerly point of mainland Australia. A famous lighthouse stands there,
made of a limestone that glows a brilliant white on sunny days.
Attracted by the awesome coastal beauty and the impressive lighthouse,
visitors are often just as amazed to also find there an old wooden waterwheel
which has been completely encased in solid limestone.
Natural formations whose ages are not known may lead some to believe that
they have taken thousands or even millions of years to form.
In 1895, when the lighthouse was being built, the stonemasons lived in
nearby cottages, and a large wooden waterwheel and aqueduct were constructed to
supply them with fresh water from a natural spring. The flow from the spring
turned the wheel, which in turn operated a pump which piped water to the
cottages.1 There are caves in limestone rock in the area, and the
water which flows over the wheel has a high mineral content. It didn’t take
long for the minerals to precipitate out of the water and begin to form
limestone. Eventually the wheel stopped turning, and became trapped in rock, in
just a few short decades.
Today, the spring still flows, and the waterwheel stands as a testimony
to the rapid formation of limestone. Natural formations whose ages are not
known may lead some to believe that they have taken thousands or even millions
of years to form. Given the right chemical environment, the thousands of years
since Noah’s Flood are actually a vast amount of time adequate to explain the
sorts of geological features we have grown up to believe speak of millions of
years.2
The next time you hear or read about limestone taking eons of time to
form you can remember the famous waterwheel at Cape Leeuwin, still standing
there for all to see, which ‘turned to stone’ within living memory.
Photo: Rod Walsh
1. 1 Waterwheel,
margaretrivervista.com/cape-leeuwin-waterwheel.html, accessed 18 November 2011.
2. 2 Petrified waterwheel, Creation 16(2):25,
1994; creation.com/petrified-waterwheel.
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