#murphy's haystacks

[hladky]

Mortana SA, 2025 website / instagram / blog

[lionfloss]

Murphy's Haystacks

[therealuniverse]

MILKY WAY OVER MURPHY'S HAYSTACKS This image, taken by Dylan Toh, shows the Milky Way over Murphy's Haystacks, which are inselberg rock formations found between Streaky Bay and Port Kenny on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. The rock formations got their name when a traveller in a coach saw the formation in the distance and asked how a farmer could produce so much hay. The rocks became known as Murphy's Haystacks as the farm was on a property owned by a man named Murphy.

Toh took 13 vertical images with a 5dmk3, Canon 16-35mm F2.8 II lens, at 16mm, F3.2, iso3200, 30 second exposure with light painting on the rocks done with a flash light for 3- 4 seconds of each exposure. The photos were shot in between last light and moonrise, approximately 8pm. -TEL Image: Dylan Toh, Everlook photography http://www.everlookphotography.com/ https://www.facebook.com/everlookphotography http://www.streakybay.sa.gov.au/page.aspx?u=237

[earthstory]

Murphy’s Haystacks

These large features are found on the Eyre Peninsula, hanging out over the ocean in southern Australia. The name originates from them being on the property of a family named murphy and a group of stagecoach riders in the 1800s seeing them at a distance and asking why the property had such big piles of hay. Up close, they are very much not made from hay; instead, they are granite.

Murphy’s Haystacks are big blobs or “tumuli” eroded from a block of a unit known as the Hiltaba Granite. This granite was one of the events in the Precambrian that was part of Australia growing outwards from the ancient cratonic core found in the country today. Continents grow by adding rocks to them at subduction zones and by forming new island arcs; those island arcs often produce granites like these. These granites are just over 1.5 billion years old.

The shapes of the Haystacks are thought to be controlled by joints – fractures that form in the rocks as they approach the surface. Water that flows into these joints will open the fractures up, shaping them into blob-shapes. These rocks are not true boulders as the fractures are thought to be only vertical, not horizontal, meaning that the bottom of the Haystacks are still hooked to the granitic body below.

-JBB

Image credit: https://flic.kr/p/5hqHdt

References: https://bit.ly/2E6qyYE https://bit.ly/2GTfpNw

[lionfloss]

Murphy's Haystacks

[geotourism11]

Murphy's Haystacks: A Breathtaking Granite Inselbergs of Australia - Geotourism

Murphy's Haystacks, distinctive inselberg rock formations, are situated at Mortana on South Australia's Eyre Peninsula, specifically between

[pangeen]

Murphy's Haystacks

by jrodcaptures