Zebra Rock

More about  rocks. These earrings are about fifteen years old, but the rock they are made from is something like 600 million years old. It’s zebra rock, a siltstone unique to the East Kimberley region in Western Australia, around Lake Argyle.
 
From what I’ve read, no-one has worked out how these red and white stripes were actually formed. The Duracks, a famous pioneering family in the region, used lumps of zebra rock to border their garden beds at the Argyle Downs homestead. Nowadays there is a tourist industry based around the mining of zebra rock and the jewellery and other objects made from it.
 
Should you wear 600 million year old rock as jewellery? Is that respectful? It’s a strange experience even to handle something so old.