I went to this place called Boulder Rock after work, both because I needed to get some fresh air, but also because I wanted to test my (still) new camera, the OM-5 Mark II.
To actually get to the location, you follow Brookton Highway for a bit. I would heavily recommend GPS navigation for this, as actually spotting it through the trees while going 110Kph (~70Mph) is not that easy.
When you get there you can park your car on the side of the road. When I did some research before I went, I saw old(ish) posts mentioning how it used to be accessible by car, that there was signage and park benches all around it- but that has since been removed. The oldest references I could find to this was about 2011, so those signs haven’t been there for a good 15 years now.
The view from the treeline.
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OM-5 Mark II M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-45mm f/4 PRO
After parking your car, you can head south into the treeline and you will very quickly spot the area, you’ll notice the main large “rock” that the boulder sits on, and if you’re lucky you may even see the boulder already.
Facing the south-ish
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OM-5 Mark II M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-45mm f/4 PRO
It was very quiet when I was there, nothing but the sound of wind caressing the leaves on the trees and the birds singing.
You end up on the north-side of the rock, and facing south you will be looking straight at it, getting on top of the rock isn’t the easiest if you did it the way I did, as the incline is quite steep, and if you are not able-bodied you may not have a great time; though if you make a circle around the outskirts of the rock to instead stand on the south-side of the rock, you can more easily get on top of “Boulder Rock”.
There were little streams and puddles of water surrounding the rock.
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OM-5 Mark II M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-45mm f/4 PRO
A little puddle of water on top of the rock.
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OM-5 Mark II M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-45mm f/4 PRO
Once on top, there are little puddles of water, and little holes no deeper than 10cm that form little “lakes” as it looks like. With the moss around it you can kind of imagine it being a lake with trees surrounding as a picture taken from above.
Awfully spherical boulder.
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OM-5 Mark II M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-45mm f/4 PRO
But now for the actual reason I came there, the boulder. Coming from well-built up urbanized swampy Europe, things like this are uncommon to me. So I had to do some research why on earth such a big circular boulder just sits on top of that rock, when it is clearly way too large to have been moved there, and there is nothing above it where it could have fallen down there.
Natural jointing in the granite that looks like a paved / tiled surface
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OM-5 Mark II M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-45mm f/4 PRO
There is also this, what appears to be tiles or stones, almost as if at some point in time someon tried to build flooring here, but it turns out that this is natural jointing in the granite.
The big boulder, with other boulders in the background
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OM-5 Mark II M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-45mm f/4 PRO
Now I am no Geologist, so my explanation may not be 100% the best, however as far as my understanding goes: molten granite cools deep underground, forms a solid mass and makes these circular shapes, now over millions if not billions of years the granite rises to the surface, cracks into giant blocks, erodes into large circles, and the softer stone around it weathers and erodes away faster than the actual granite, leaving just the granite above it.
An interesting-looking rock formation
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OM-5 Mark II M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-45mm f/4 PRO
Overall it is a lovely place, quiet and remote so it serves as a nice breath of fresh air.
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