Pinnacles, Cervantes to Kalbarri
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First off, happy Valentine’s Day to my wife. Even though it may be long after before you read this. I’m thinking about you.
Woke up at sunup, around 6am. Had breakfast, got organized and headed for The Pinnacles. We got sidetracked at a little memorial park because of some odd trees. They were Northern something Pines, can’t remember, but they had very odd formations of needles (see pictures). They pointed up and created straight lines across the tops of the branches. They look like something out of Dr. Seuss.
We headed on to The Pinnacles. Along the way, there was a turnoff for Hangover Bay which we decided we should go see. A very nice beach and nobody there. At all. Totally empty. We went swimming for the first time. The water was great. The current was a little strong and it took some effort to not end up down the beach. We could have easily spent the day there but we had to keep moving.
We headed from there up to The Pinnacles park. Before we got there, we came upon the mini-pinnacles. Sort of a preview of the real thing. We stopped and had a look around. The pinnacles are rock formations formed from some elaborate process of limestone, hummus, leaching, erosion, yadda yadda yadda. The description in the brochure is too long to type in. But basically, the ground eroded away and left these tall pointy rock formations over a fairly large area. The underlying ground is an odd shade of yellow, making for a very other worldly experience. The preview was cool but the stuff in the park was amazing. The pictures don’t really do it justice. They cover a very large area. It looked kind of like a modern art installation. One of those Christo things or something.
The ranger at the entrance was very helpful. She convinced us to buy a park pass that would be good around Western Australia and got us excited about heading up to Exmouth where she said it was really great. We spent the rest of the day arguing about whether we really had time to head up there. It’s a long way. At this point we still haven’t decided. A decision for the morning. Regardless, she was very nice and as we headed out she shouted “See you later” to which Les responded “Probably not” as we drove off. Which I thought was pretty funny.
We headed north along the coast to Jurien. The “bush” seems quite thick here but it’s all low scrub. Looks pretty impregnable. I don’t know how the aborigines ever got through it. Especially barefoot. From Jurien we headed back out to the main highway and proceeded through more bush interspersed with sand dunes. We came across some very large, very white sand dunes which we drove out to and walked around on a bit. Kind of wished we had some cardboard or something to do a little sledding.
There were very few signs of life. On very rare occasions we came across corrugated sheet metal hovels that seemed to be tied in some way to fishing boats anchored off shore. So apparently there’s a bit of a fishing industry. But other than that, the world doesn’t seem too interested in living there. Didn’t see many cars and went through long stretches where we saw nobody.
While the foliage was always “scrubby”, the variety of plants and the variations as we headed north was pretty interesting. It started as the low stuff I mentioned, then trees appeared, then disappeared. The scrub got taller, then shorter. Then some very interesting trees that grew their trunks up about 4 feet, then turned 90 degrees and the leaf part of the tree grew along the ground. The wind was very strong and many of the trees were growing at fairly sharp angles in the direction of the wind so it seems the wind blows there a lot. There were areas of agriculture with sheep mostly or growing hay. Then the bush reappeared. Seemed very dependent on elevation and the distance from the ocean whether one could make a go of growing things.
We made it to Geraldton, which in contrast to what we’d been through was a major metropolis. Actually about the size of Beaverton but for this part of the world, it’s huge. I decided we should look for a wireless connection and we drove around a bit but no success. All we managed to do was get lost. But in doing so, we came across a memorial to the HMAS Sydney, which was lost with all hands during WW II. It was quite nicely done.
We finally made it back to the highway where we decided to make for Kalbarri for the night. Kalbarri is on the coast about 50km west of the main highway. The road passes through Kalbarri National Park, which looked an awful lot like everything else we’d been driving through. But I guess the attraction is the Murchison River which carved gorges through some red rock (the first significant rock of any kind we’ve seen apart from the pinnacles). We stopped at a “river overlook” where we could take a short hike down to the river. Although at the moment, it’s not so much a river as a series of small ponds. It’s not actually flowing. But it’s very pretty and I imagine, even more impressive when the river is running. We wandered along what would normally be the river bed and the banks of the river. At this spot, it’s carving into a red rock wall which was very colorful and had lots of birds nesting in it.
There were lots of tracks and scat around the river leading us to believe there was a large animal population running around but we didn’t see any. Except for 3 or 4 goats. We didn’t really expect to see goats and I’m pretty sure they’re not indigenous but they appeared to be wild. Must have gotten loose at some point.
We got into Kalbarri after dark and found ourselves a campsite overlooking the bay that the river forms as it joins the ocean. Les cooked us spaghetti and kielbasa. We’re still arguing about Exmouth but I’m leaning towards not going. It just seems like too much of a trek.
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