The “boomerang” or “pipe wrench”

Photo #1 shows Bear Hill in the upper centre of the photo seen from north and somewhat east of Cape St Lawrence not too far off shore. The features on previous pages are also visible here, as well as the “boomerang” seen right of centre, an angular shaped slab of rock to the right of the “vaulted cave” seen on the previous page.

Photo #2, whose scope runs out nearly to the end of Cape St Lawrence, where the automated navigation light can be seen at the far right, shows at the middle left of the photo the feature I named the “boomerang” in photo #1. In this view, from well off the eastern end of Frasers Beach, the feature here looks to my eyes much more like a “pipe wrench” grasping the stand of trees between its jaws than a boomerang. But it is actually the same feature, showing once again what a difference perspective makes.

The next page looks at the shore from this feature towards the northwestern tip of Cape St Lawrence, so I will comment here only on how much battering this projecting headland has received, where photo #2 shows yet more great missing chunks of terrain and another vault along these most interesting shores.

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Photo #3 is a telephoto view of the ridge descending to Cape St Lawrence, showing the lower “jaw” of the “pipe wrench” with the grove of trees behind. This is effectively a continuation to the west of the view seen in photo #5 on the previous page. The “jaw” itself looks pretty flat, though showing some signs of scarring and breakage, but the adjacent terrain is a mass of broken rocks and rubble. The red colouration and the layering of these rocks is amply clear in this photo.

Photo #4 is another telephoto view showing the rocks at the leading (western) edge of the “boomerang” (or upper “jaw” of the “pipe wrench”). Comparing the height of a tree to the features seen here gives some idea of how steep and sharp these cliffs are, though the telephoto lens tends to throw such comparisons off; still, anyone unwise enough (at least in my estimation) to be standing on the narrow ledge below the cliff in the centre of the photo would certainly not be looking over the top of the cliff. Refer back to photo #1 for the context in which these cliffs appear.

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Photo #5 is a wider angled view of the layered cliffs, which appear as successive ridges, to the west of the leading edge of the “boomerang”. It is hard to escape the belief that there must have once been a great landslide when huge chunks of fractured tilted layers broke away and slid into the Gulf below, long since ground away by the pounding of the waves. The rounded scallops at the base of these cliffs seem to have been carved by the action of the waves and not by any dramatic cataclysmic event. Whatever the actual explanation, this is certainly an awe-inspiring landscape!