The Pinnacles

On this trip I went some 600km North of Perth. I went out to the renowned Pinnacles desert. But had lots of fun before we got there!
First of all we headed out through the Swan Valley to Caversham Wildlife Park. This is a huge park which I would like to have explored, but we were on a time limit to see the marsupials of Australia! Firstly we saw the kangaroos, brown, grey and white. The white kangaroo is not normally found in the wild, they are usually bred in captivity. These roos were all fantastically tame and as soon as you entered the paddock they came to see if you were going to feed them. It was a great experience to be able to get up close and pat the roos. I just loved it. Second we saw the wombat. This was a huge creature which was sat on the keeper's lap, pretty ugly actually and not particularly friendly. All the same it was interesting to see him, he was actually an 11 year old southern hairy nosed wombat called Big Buns. He weighed 28 kilos and was all muscle.Lastly we went to look at the koalas. These were a bigger species than the last ones that I had seen and on the whole seemed less aggressive. But it was time to move on.
We moved through the Darling ranges, small hills which were originally attached to southern Africa, along Highway 1 which is the longest highway in the world (18,500Km) to open countryside which was mainly agricultural land or bush. I had learned two things, that these vast open fields were called paddocks and that bush was actually similar to our woodland or forest. Just different names for different things. The farmers here grew mainly maize, wheat, barley, lupins and canola. We were now in the Nambung National Park.
We went to a small coastal fishing town called Cervantes. This had been named after an American whaler that had sunk off the coast in this area. What a beautiful beach we saw, turquoise sea and white coral sands, fringed with small sand dunes supporting plants that only survive this salty air, just idyllic. It was beautiful and even better was that there was no one on it. We didn't stay long but then it was so hot that we wouldn't have been able to stay out in the sunshine, safely, for very long. We had lunch in an out of the way place, a wooden hut with facilities. The ceiling inside was covered in wildflowers which had been gathered during the season and the bunches left hanging to dry out. In UK we have several flowers which are everlasting, such as Statice, but Western Australia is known for its wildflowers and it has many varieties which are shipped all over the world.
We arrived at The Pinnacles Desert soon after this. This was one of those awe inspiring places, that catch you on the hop and cause you to catch your breath. Thousands of eerie limestone pillars, up to 4m tall form the Pinnacles Desert. The moonscape scenery is made by the pillars rising out of the stark desert landscape of yellow quartz sand. The pillars are hard on the outside being made of calcrite, a mixture of calcium and lime. The Pinnacles remained relatively unknown to most Australians until the 1960s, when the area was added to Nambung National Park. The area receives over 250,000 visitors a year. A visitor precinct and interpretive centre was completed in March 2008. Despite this and because the area is so vast, the landscape is still empty of people and so you can appreciate the beauty and spiritual offerings of this place. It is thought that these pinnacles stretch all the way to Perth but as yet have not been uncovered.
The fun bit of our tour was yet to come. We began our journey back and came to Lancelin. Here the bus stopped and the driver let the pressure out of the tyres because we were about to ride the dunes. This was an experience I am not sure I wish to repeat. Not liking fun fair rides I hadn't suspected that this was going to be like one of them but from a completely different angle! The sand dunes were pure white coral and were tall and magnificent. They changed size and shape each day according to the winds. It was a desert in all senses of the word. I had to keep telling myself that this is fun and that the man driving the four wheel drive bus takes people out everyday to do this! When you are hanging vertically over a shear ledge in a bus that has already brought you from Perth and has also to take you back again, it is a different thought that goes through your head!! I suspect lovers of thrill rides would tell me different! Anyway I completed this experience and enjoyed it. Next came sand boarding, which is really like sledging down the dunes. This I missed out and just watched. Funnily enough, not because I didn't want to do it but because I had experienced climbing back up dunes in Namibia and knew how all consuming this was. Others found this out as I sat up the top and watched them have this fun. By now the sun was beginning to set and it was time to put the fun away and return to Perth much wiser for all the experiences of the day.