pinnacles

Fri 10.08 - Once we had the dinner in us, we picked up Vicky and drove to Guilford on the outskirts of Perth. We stayed in Swan Valley caravan park beside a filling station. Swan Valley was the first wine producing area in Australia. We went to a German Bar/Restaurant for one drink. I had a Butterscotch Stout, tasted lovely. Imagine Guinness with a toffee aftertaste. We went back to the caravan park and had a few glasses of wine and watched a Robbie Williams concert on tele. Robbies in tour in Oz at the beginning of November and we'll hopefully get to see him.

Sat 11.08 - We were up at 9am and on the road to Cervantes (the nearest town to the Pinnacles) by 10.30am. We arrived there about 2 hours later and booked in to the hostel. Its a lovely hostel, and its very clean. It's as nice as the hostel in Augusta, but there is not a lot to do in Cervantes apart from the Pinnacles

We made our own lunch and headed for the strange rock formation known as the Pinnacles. They are found in the Red Desert area of the Nambung National Park on the coast of Western Australia north of Perth and just south of Jurien Bay. The tallest is 5 metres tall, others the size of a finger. The current theory is that the Pinnacles are slightly harder columns of limestone that formed around tree tap roots that penetrated deep into limestone formed within ancient sand dunes. Water is always active in limestone and calcite is thought to have been preferentially deposited near these roots. When the softer limestone was eroded away, the columns remained. (There is an older theory that the Pinnacles are the result of calcification of tree stumps from an ancient forest, once covered in sand and now exposed by shifting dunes. Anyway thats enough of the scientific bit. They are pretty amazing and are spread over a wide area. We stayed until sunset, this was quite surreal, almost like another planet.

I dont know if anyone used to watch the BBC show Billy Connollys World Tour of Australia a few years ago but I couldn't get rid of the image of the Big Yin himself running naked through the Pinnacles whilst he was here. I resisted my notion to copy his idea!!!

After sunset we headed for something to eat. We hadn't really tried any seafood so we decided to treat ourselves. Vicki ordered the lobster, Claire and I played it safe and ordered Schnapper. I saw there was oysters on the menu and had always wanted to try one so I

ordered just the one. After a bit of psyching up I tilted the lump of stuff into my mouth. It made it way half way down my throat and paused whilst my stomach decided whether it really wanted this thing. Claire and Vicky were going to stand either side of me with napkins at the ready but they needn't have worried. With one concerted effort I managed to swallow the thing. I felt rotten for about 10 minutes afterwards. How that can be an aphrodisiac I do not know!!! Vicky lobster didn't taste that nice either. Give me "Donegal Catch" anyday!!!

Sun 12.08 - We decided to get up for the Sunrise so up we got at 6.15am and were out at the Pinnacle at 6.45am. The sun had already started to come up and apart from one couple we had the Pinnacles to ourselves. There were some great colours in the sky. Once in a life time experience.

After that we drove to Lake Thetis, which has stromatolites in it. Stromatolites are laminated structures built mainly by cyanobacteria (sometimes known as blue-green bacteria or, less correctly, as blue-green algae). They are still found today, but were once much more common. They dominated the fossil record between about 2 000 million and 1 000 million years ago. Nowadays they are found mainly in saline lakes or hot spring environments, often in environmental niches that other organisms cannot tolerate. The best example of living stromatolites is at Hamelin Pool, Shark Bay, Western Australia.They are one of the oldest forms of life Stromatolites have been defined as "morphologically circumscribed accretionary growth structures with primary lamination that is, or may be, biogenic". Sounds impressive doesn't it, but I still don't really know what they are. They are not that spectacular to look at but as one of the oldest life forms has to be admired for what it is.

We then drove to the home stopping at the Serpentine Dam. Ok, as dams go, but dont go out of your way to see it. We arrived by in Bunbury at 6.30pm