Marble Bar is a town and rock formation in the Pilbara region of north-western Western Australia. It is well known for its extremely hot weather, with a mean maximum temperature second only to Wyndham, Western Australia.
History
The town was officially gazetted in 1893 following the discovery of gold in the area in 1890 by a prospector named Francis Jenkins who is remembered by the name of the town's main street. The name Marble Bar was derived from a nearby jasper bar mistaken for marble and now known as Marble Bar, which runs across the bed of the Coongan River. In 1891 the town boasted a population in excess of 5,000 as it experienced a rush on the goldfields. By 1895 the town had its Government offices built; these are now National Trust buildings. Cut from local stone, the buildings still stand today. Possibly the most famous building in the town is the Ironclad Hotel built in the 1890s, constructed of corrugated Iron, and given the name by American miners who were reminded of the Ironclad ships from the United States. In 2006, the Ironclad hotel was listed on the Western Australian register of heritage places. Several large gold nuggets were discovered as a result of the goldrush. The 333 ounce Little Hero nugget, the 413 ounce Bobby Dazzler and the 332 ounce General Gordon nugget were all found in the goldfields around the town. During World War II, United States Army Air Forces and Royal Australian Air Forceheavy bombers were based away as the crow flies at Corunna Downs Airfield. Allied airmen from the base attacked Japanese forces as far away as Borneo. The Port Hedland to Marble Bar railway opened on 15 July 1911, costing around £300,000 to build. Due to low traffic and high financial losses, the railway closed from 31 May 1951. This railway could be seen as a narrow gauge precursor to the network of standard gauge iron-ore railways that have since been created across the Pilbara.
Climate
Marble Bar has a hot desert climate with sweltering summers and warm winters. Most of the annual rainfall occurs in the summer. The town set a world record of most consecutive days of or above, during a period of 160 days from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924. Although annual temperatures indicate Marble Bar should be within the tropics, with a July mean of, it does not have the high precipitation requirements for hot-weather climates to sustain tropical vegetation. During December and January, temperatures in excess of are common, and the average maximum temperature exceeds normal human body temperature for six months each year. Marble Bar receives 159.6 clear days annually. Dewpoint in the summers is between. In contrast to most of the year, winters are warm, with days averaging, low humidity and clear skies. Nights from June to August can be chilly, occasionally as low as but frost is unknown. Even in mid winter however, brief bursts of heat can result in the temperature rising to as high as for a few days before dropping back to normal. Rainfall is sparse and erratic, though variability is significantly less extreme than over the coastal Pilbara – the tenth percentile being vis-à-vis only in Onslow. It falls largely between December and March, with occasional rain events from autumn northwest cloudbands up to June. As little as can fall in a year; however, during heavy wet seasons when the monsoon reaches well south into the Pilbara, the rainfall can be significantly more – as much as fell between April 1999 and March 2000, and fell in 1980 owing to several tropical cyclones. The most rain recorded in a month is in March 2007, and the most in one day on 2 March 1941.
North Pole
A locality nearby is known as North Pole. It is the location of rock formations considered to have evidence that puts the origin of life on earth back to 3,400–3,500 million years ago, due to stromatolites in particular rock sequences. However this is disputed, and it is argued that stromatolites older than 3,200 mya are not the result of living organisms, the small conical structures in the Strelley Pool formation being formed by evaporation and a dome structure from the North Pole chert being formed by soft-sediment deformation.
