The Pinnacles Desert

We had an earlier start this morning (although not that early by anyone's standards) and had to get packed and out of the room by 10pm. I already seem to have more bags than I came with - how did that happen? We then headed to Hertz to get the car. As per usual, the car ended up costing us more than we expected as we decided to go for the no excess option. If we didn't the excess would be $3000, unless it was a single vehicle accident where it's $5500. The small print also said that if the car was damaged the entire amount of the excess would be charged to the credit card on the account immediately and then refunded if the amount of the damage turned out to be less than $5500. Too much risk for me, so we opted for the no excess option which wasn't too expensive but it's annoying that there also seem to be extra charges when you book a hire car.

We made our way back to the hostel, packed up the car and managed to find our way out of Perth and onto the Northern Highway without getting lost -- thanks to my excellent navigation skills. After a couple of hours we were getting very hungry but disappointly there doesn't seem to be anywhere decent to eat along the highway -- we'll have to plan for that in future. We got to Cervantes, 250kms north of Perth, in the afternoon and checked into the Cervantes Lodge for the night. Cervantes is a small town with a population of about 500 which is most famous for the being the "Gateway to the Pinnacles". We grabbed a Pizza for lunch and picked up some groceries for dinner and breakfast before heading to Nambung National Park. Last night we considered going to Lancelin on our way to Cervantes but decided against it since driving from Lancelin to Cervantes (directly) involves a lot of driving on unsealed roads which we weren't sure our hire car would be able for. After the short drive to the Pinnacles we were sure this was the right decision. It was only about 20km but we have to drive painfully slow as the 'roads' were fairly rough and it took ages.

Anyway we stopped off at Lake Thetis, one for the few sites in the world where living stromatolites are found. Stromato - whats? Stromatolites are defined as the "fossilised remains of a colony or mat of 'cyanobacteria'. Hmmm. Cyanobacteria is known as blue-green algae, they produce food and oxygen through photosynthesis. They form stromatolites by trapping and binding sediment and precipitating calcium carbonate from the water. Stromatolites are very slow growing - the ones at Lake Thetis are more than 1200 years old. It's hard to describe what a stromatolite actually looks like -- to be honest they seemed like funny looking rocks to me, but very unusual.

After a few minutes at Lake Thetis trying to understand what a Stromatolite actually is and take a few photos we headed on to the pinnacles desert, for another Geology lesson. Here thousands of huge limestone pillars rise out of yellow sand, some reaching up to three and a half metres tall. The raw material for the limestone of the pinnacles came from sea shells. These shells were broken down into lime-rich sands which were brought ashore by waves and then carried inland. The formation of the Pinnacles would have taken many thousands of years. We decided to park the car and walk the 3.5 km route around the desert rather than driving. The desert is fairly spectacular and very unusual so it made an interesting walk. Sunsets are meant to be spectacular but unfortunately it was a cloudy evening. However the moon came out in the pink sky in the early evening which made for some interesting photos.

Afterwards we headed back to the hostel where we relaxed for the evening and cooked some dinner for ourselves. It's Liverpool v Chelsea in the Champions League semi-final second leg tonight (3 am) and Matt has set his alarm to get up and watch it. Hmmm.