Saturday 11th November – Jet skiing and the Pinnacles

It got mighty hot mighty early in the camper, but it was very peaceful.  Too peaceful.  The fridge was not humming as it should be.  Three nights in a row without a plug-in had clearly left the second battery with insufficient charge to make it through the night and after stocking up for the week yesterday our goods were now in danger!  Luckily, everyone around us also seemed to be up at 740am and making enough noise for me not to worry about starting the camper’s engine to give the fridge a kick-start.  Disaster averted, things still feel cool enough in the fridge, but we really need a full night’s charge to get the battery back to full working order.  Moving off our pitch at 10am we drove half a mile down the road to Back Beach where the jet skiing practise was happening in preparation for the competition tomorrow.  I’m not going to lie, I found myself strolling through the surf on a stunning beach for the second day in a row and wanted to pinch myself.  Then we set up with the binos and my flashy camera to wait for the fun to begin.  Those guys were pulling off some crazy stunts!

Tearing ourselves away around midday, we got back to the camper.  We really needed to make further progress north as we were still only just over an hour away from Perth after a week in the van!  After a quick bite and an urgent petrol fill we drove on to Nambung National Park gaining entry to see the pinnacles for FREE with our park pass! These pillars of limestone in the midst of yellow sand dunes are in complete contrast to the flat terrain covered in red dust that we have started to get used to in Oz. 

A Cordey for scale....

The winding trail through the yellow sands

There are still a couple of theories about how they came into existence but it is agreed that they are hundreds of thousands of years old, however only became visible during the last couple of hundred years due to the shifting sand dunes in the area.  There is a 4km trail that takes you to different zones of pinnacles and lookouts that show the surrounding desert.  After which we took in the interpretation centre to help us fathom how this bizarre landscape came into existence (see above!). The visit also gave us an insight into the delights of living with swarms of flies.  I have no doubt that this was nothing compared to what we may experience in the red centre.  We have not broken out the face nets yet!  But, imagine 20 to 30 flies constantly bothering you as soon as you step out of your vehicle and you’re there with us.  If you swat them off your arms they land on your face.  I let them be on my arms.  Then we tried twirling our arms around like a whirling dervish just before jumping into the van to try and avoid taking our new chums in with us.  Imagine if you will.  I hope you now have a smile on your face!

Moving ever northward it was getting to that time of day when we had to consider our stopping point for the night.  Needing that electric hook-up but not wanting to pay a fortune for it we headed to Julien Bay only to find that there was a festival on that night and there was no room at the inn.  This time I called ahead to another caravan park 30 minutes further up the coast and was relieved to find we could get a powered site in Green Head for only $34.  Off we trotted and found ourselves at a lovely caravan park only a short stroll away from a reclaimed coastal dune nature reserve.