First Break, Day 1 - Pinnacles

Well we are back home now with time for a couple days wind down before next terrm starts. I will post our trip with one entry per day - sometimes more than one day at a time, and as always just click on any photo to see it larger.

First things first - Happy (belated) Birthday Alistair (on April 6 - our departure day). We saw your gift hunt video on your blog. It looked very exciting - we are sure that you must be enjoying your new scooter!!! Wish I had one...(actually, I wish I was young enough to use one :-)

As a prelude to our April school break postings, here is a summary of our itinerary. We planned to travel the west coast of Australia from Mandurah up to Exmouth. Enroute we hoped to see the Pinnacles, Monkey Mia/Sharks Bay, and anything else we happened upon which was of interest. At Exmouth, we planned on visiting the Ningaloo Reef - not the Great Barrier Reef, but pretty darned impressive from the accounts we have heard to date. We also were hoping to hook up with Cindy in Exmouth - a fellow Barrieite teacher on exchange near Perth also (who'd have guessed there could be more than one!!!), and with Jeez - a fellow Pinjarra teacher in Coral Bay.

With this agenda in hand, we set off on April 6 on our journey. Day one was actually Good Friday - a day when pretty much everything shuts down. So our plan to spend the day driving and to visit the Pinnacles worked well. Our side trip to pick up more honey in Gingin failed as they were closed, but lunch in Gingin back at Eliza's cafe was successful.

Once settled into our room, we quickly headed out for Nambung park and the Pinnacles. We arrived in the park late afternoon so the lighting was quite good for photos. The Pinnacles are limestone formations left behind when the surrounding sands are blown away - you can read a bit more at this site.

We were quite surprised by the diversity and large area they covered. There was a wide variety of size and shape and colour. Some areas were densely populated and others spread out. Some had flat tops and were straight / cylindrical and others were clumps. Some were solid, some had holes through them. In different sections, they had different hues – some areas they were pinkish, some areas yellow, others whitish and some were greys and blacks. As we moved through the park, the sun continued to drop in the sky and the colours were constantly changing the effect of setting sun made the colours even more dramatic.

We hung around through to sunset despite the threat of driving in the dusk/dark with kangaroos on the road. There were some families enjoying the sunset view with wine and a dinner spread. This looked divinely civil enough to prompt us to copy on Saturday.

On the drive home we did encounter roos (live ones – not the routine dead ones) at the side of the road – we took the drive at a much reduced speed just to be safe.