After having been south along the coast and around the city already I thought I knew what to expect once I got north of Perth, but no. The coastline south of Perth is dry but still has forested areas and green pastures, especially in the sheep ranching areas. Going north is a whole different experience. After I got out of the Swan it got really dry, really quick. No farms, no houses, and very little vegetation. This part of the west coast is so undeveloped that roadhouses show up on map atlases that cover the entire country. Ones that are open 24 hours are rare, and are printed in bold. It's equivalent to seeing Bob's Mini Mart on a Rand McNally Atlas of the US.
It continued that way for 2 or 3 hours until I got to the little town of Lancelin. Lancelin is like so many other tiny Australian towns. There are no significant businesses to speak of. It is a lonely outpost on the west coast of Australia that has a cluster of a few dozen nondescript houses, a run down fish and chips shack next to the local roadhouse (which also serves as the post office, hotel, pub, social club, and general center of local commerce and social life), a few mangy dogs, and some even mangier looking bogans. At first glance Lancelin doesn’t seem to have any real reason for existing except that it is literally the end of the road. Highway 60, which is a proper 6 lane highway in Perth and at least a sealed road until Lancelin, abruptly becomes little more than a dirt path in Lancelin. There are three ways of continuing north from this point: parking your car and walking (which will more than likely kill you); driving into the great unknown on an unmaintained, rutted, poor excuse for a road (which also has a fair chance of resulting in your demise, and does so for dozens of foolishly adventurous motorists in Australia every year); and turning around and backtracking about 20 miles to the next road inland.
I was about to take the third option for leaving Lancelin when I rounded the corner and saw the reason that Lancelin exists. It was one of those rare postcard moments, the kind when you take a picture because you feel you have to, but knowing full well that the camera won’t do justice to what you are seeing. Laid out in a perfect half circle was one of the most perfect beaches I have ever seen. Perhaps the only more picturesque beach I have ever been to was on the extreme eastern end of Vieques, but that doesn’t count because it was so nice only because at that time it had been kept under lock and key by the US military for the last 60 year or so. This place was a public beach, accessible to anyone who took the time to find it. The water was so clear I could see a reef sitting under breaking waves about a mile offshore. The sand was pure white, the sea bright green, there was no trash, and I could see for probably a mile in either direction and could only spot maybe 10 or so people and a handful of windsurfers running between the beach and the reef. There are no signs to tell you it’s there, which is probably due equally to two facts: as I was to find out later in the day there are so many of these beaches around north of Lancelin that it’s not locally noteworthy, and there wouldn’t be very many people around to read the sign if someone bothered to erect it. I had my lunch there before remembering that I still had to get farther north in time to see the Pinnacles before dark.
Driving north out of Lancelin the road got more lonely than it had been before. It was about three hours straight of bush on my right, and low hills with sand dunes beyond them on my left. Every now and again the Indian Ocean showed as a thin ribbon of blue through the dunes. Even more occasionally I’d see a pasture or a dirt track leading to some unknown desination over the horizon. It lasted like that all the way to Cervantes.
Just outside Cervantes I finally reached the Pinnacles. The Pinnacles are a collection of stone pillars that cover about 30 square miles in the middle of Nambung National Park just south of Cervantes. According to the favorite geological theory at the moment, the Pinnacles are the remnants of a limestone deposit that leached away through a complex combination of chemical and biological erosion. According to this theory after the limestone was deposited in the form of coral reefs, the ocean receded and a forest grew over the limestone. As tree roots gradually fractured the limestone, acidic groundwater leached into the limestone along the root channels and dissolved the vast majority of it. The Pinnacles are what’s left of the limestone, and they only exist where a calcrete layer between the limestone and the acidic forest humus was too thick for the roots to penetrate. Sounds good to me.
The Pinnacles are an eerie place. It’s always changing because being near the coast the wind nearly always blows, and the sandy soil shifts in the wind constantly, exposing new pinnacles and burying others as the dunes move. Most are roughly cigar-shaped, and to me they are faintly reminiscent of tombstones.
It continued that way for 2 or 3 hours until I got to the little town of Lancelin. Lancelin is like so many other tiny Australian towns. There are no significant businesses to speak of. It is a lonely outpost on the west coast of Australia that has a cluster of a few dozen nondescript houses, a run down fish and chips shack next to the local roadhouse (which also serves as the post office, hotel, pub, social club, and general center of local commerce and social life), a few mangy dogs, and some even mangier looking bogans. At first glance Lancelin doesn’t seem to have any real reason for existing except that it is literally the end of the road. Highway 60, which is a proper 6 lane highway in Perth and at least a sealed road until Lancelin, abruptly becomes little more than a dirt path in Lancelin. There are three ways of continuing north from this point: parking your car and walking (which will more than likely kill you); driving into the great unknown on an unmaintained, rutted, poor excuse for a road (which also has a fair chance of resulting in your demise, and does so for dozens of foolishly adventurous motorists in Australia every year); and turning around and backtracking about 20 miles to the next road inland.
I was about to take the third option for leaving Lancelin when I rounded the corner and saw the reason that Lancelin exists. It was one of those rare postcard moments, the kind when you take a picture because you feel you have to, but knowing full well that the camera won’t do justice to what you are seeing. Laid out in a perfect half circle was one of the most perfect beaches I have ever seen. Perhaps the only more picturesque beach I have ever been to was on the extreme eastern end of Vieques, but that doesn’t count because it was so nice only because at that time it had been kept under lock and key by the US military for the last 60 year or so. This place was a public beach, accessible to anyone who took the time to find it. The water was so clear I could see a reef sitting under breaking waves about a mile offshore. The sand was pure white, the sea bright green, there was no trash, and I could see for probably a mile in either direction and could only spot maybe 10 or so people and a handful of windsurfers running between the beach and the reef. There are no signs to tell you it’s there, which is probably due equally to two facts: as I was to find out later in the day there are so many of these beaches around north of Lancelin that it’s not locally noteworthy, and there wouldn’t be very many people around to read the sign if someone bothered to erect it. I had my lunch there before remembering that I still had to get farther north in time to see the Pinnacles before dark.Driving north out of Lancelin the road got more lonely than it had been before. It was about three hours straight of bush on my right, and low hills with sand dunes beyond them on my left. Every now and again the Indian Ocean showed as a thin ribbon of blue through the dunes. Even more occasionally I’d see a pasture or a dirt track leading to some unknown desination over the horizon. It lasted like that all the way to Cervantes.
Just outside Cervantes I finally reached the Pinnacles. The Pinnacles are a collection of stone pillars that cover about 30 square miles in the middle of Nambung National Park just south of Cervantes. According to the favorite geological theory at the moment, the Pinnacles are the remnants of a limestone deposit that leached away through a complex combination of chemical and biological erosion. According to this theory after the limestone was deposited in the form of coral reefs, the ocean receded and a forest grew over the limestone. As tree roots gradually fractured the limestone, acidic groundwater leached into the limestone along the root channels and dissolved the vast majority of it. The Pinnacles are what’s left of the limestone, and they only exist where a calcrete layer between the limestone and the acidic forest humus was too thick for the roots to penetrate. Sounds good to me.
The Pinnacles are an eerie place. It’s always changing because being near the coast the wind nearly always blows, and the sandy soil shifts in the wind constantly, exposing new pinnacles and burying others as the dunes move. Most are roughly cigar-shaped, and to me they are faintly reminiscent of tombstones. The landscape is almost completely without vegetation, but certainly not without life. I found emu tracks in the sand, as well many numerous other tracks that I couldn’t identify. I also saw a sand monitor on the road and a pair 
of emus just outside the park on my drive home. Emus are ugly birds and I found out that they are curious about people as long as people don’t show an interest in them. The birds were in the bushes along the side of the road and watched as my car rolled by and came to a stop. However; as soon as I got out to take a picture they bolted out of sight through the bush.
of emus just outside the park on my drive home. Emus are ugly birds and I found out that they are curious about people as long as people don’t show an interest in them. The birds were in the bushes along the side of the road and watched as my car rolled by and came to a stop. However; as soon as I got out to take a picture they bolted out of sight through the bush.
After driving and hiking through the Pinnacles it was time to head back to Perth. I was white-knuckling it all the way for fear of hitting kangaroos, but luckily the roos stayed off the road and I got back to Perth in the middle of the the night without incident.
1. Lancelin Beach
2. Me at the Pinnacles
3 and 4. More Pinnacles.
5. Emu track in the sand.
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