Uncovering the Mystery Circles of Crookhaven

The Canberra Times

Join Tim the Yowie Man as he unravels the enigma of the Mystery Circles of Crookhaven—bizarre formations that have baffled locals and sparked countless theories. What secrets do they hold?

Transcript

00:00Glenn, I've heard all sorts of theories as to how these circles were made, including

00:13that they were somehow put there by aliens. You're not a proponent of the alien theory

00:18though, are you?

00:19No, certainly not aliens, Tim. Three more plausible theories. The first one was made

00:25by Professor Ted Bryant from Wollongong Uni, must have been about 20 or 30 years ago. His

00:32idea was that tsunamis that hit the coast here every now and then, the tsunamis have

00:37vortices in them, and these vortices are strong enough to remove the top layer of rock. And

00:46as the vortices spin, they remove the rock and form these circles. But that doesn't make

00:53sense because the circular structure actually goes below the surface. If you have a look

00:59at the side, the cross section of one of these circles, you can see that it goes down into

01:03the sediments. And so we've spelled that one. The second one is massive concretions. The

01:10structures are too big for a concretion. The concretion works out from the centre and moves

01:17out to the outside. These are too big for that. The third idea is that they were formed

01:24from shaking. Now the culprit is a dike just over here. It's quite a wide dike. It must

01:31be four or five metres wide. And when it was intruded, it's liquid magma. It's been forced

01:38up into the sediments. And as it's forced up, it creates a localised earthquake. The

01:45sediments shake as it's intruded and we get these circular structures forming. Similar

01:52to if you've got a wheelbarrow of concrete and you give it a bit of a shake, you get

01:57these circular formations in the concrete. The same thing has happened here in the sediments

02:02but it's on a much greater scale. So it's that dike which is the culprit of these circular

02:10structures. Are you 100% certain or do you think it's still a bit of a mystery? I can't

02:14be 100% certain but that's the most plausible explanation.

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