Yesterday, we only had a drive of about two hours south (along the coast) to the town of Cervantes which is famous for its Pinnacles in the Nambung National Park.
We stopped quickly at the “Leaning Tree’ 15 kilometres south of Geraldton on the Highway. I had photographed this tree in a previous trip and it still looks the same except that the foliage is now much more dense. The lean is cause by the strength of the prevailing coastal winds.
We took our time callling into each seaside town for a look at what the had to offer. Most of them were small settlements with houses that appeared to be holiday homes.
An old mill appeared through the vegetation and I thought that it was worth a photo. I believe that it is now used as a reception and conference centre.
So too, was the rickety old jetty at Leeman.
The beaches here can be quite wild, like Seaspray Beach at Dongara.
Cervantes, our stopping point for the last two nights, was formed as recently as 1962 when the government removed 505 hectares from the northwest corner of the Nambung National Park to establish a town.
Cervantes takes its name from an American whaling ship which was wrecked off the coast in 1844. A nearby island was named Cervantes and, in 1963, the name was given to the township which grew on the mainland. Amusingly some locals thought the town had been named after the Spanish author of Don Quixote and consequently many of the streets in the town have been given Spanish names. There isn’t much in the town apart from a couple of stores, a motel and a caravan park. The sports oval is used for overflow campoing and the Cervantes Club is a popular venue.
We planned an extra day in this town in order to visit the Pinnacles but perhaps we didn’t really need so much time. However, found a few things to do and see. We spent our ‘left over time’ watching the second half of the AFL Grand Final back at the hotel. What an exciting game it was.
The Pinnacles are one of the natural wonders of Australia. These strange limestone pillars are unique. They have the quality of a moonscape and, without geological understanding, seem completely out of this world.
They were produced from a set of rare circumstances. Over thousands of years, nature caused the local sand dunes to form three levels – a soil and plant level near the surface, a hard cap below the surface, and a thick layer of soft limestone at the bottom of the dune. Inevitably the roots from the plants on the top level found cracks and broke up the hard cap and the layer of soft limestone. The result was that under a surface covered with plants and soil the pinnacles developed. No one knows for sure how long ago this process occurred. It may have started as long ago as 500,000 years but equally it may only be a few thousand years old and it may still be continuing today.
From the Pinnacles,. We drove a little way back up the road to Molah Hills Lookout which gave us a 360 degree view of the surrounding countryside. This really showed us just how remote and inaccessible this part of the country actually is.
On the way back to Cervantes, we saw a sign pointing to Kangaroo Point. There was a picnic table and BBQ at the end of the road but the beach was just a long straight stretch of sand backed by bushy shrubs.
There is a business in Cervantes known as the Lobster Shack. Many lobsters are caught on the reefs out from the shore and this is the regional Lobster Capital. I imagineed it being a quaint little shack, perhaps made from corrugated iron with a few trees around it. Instead, the restaurant at the Cervantes Lobster Shack is more like a ‘Lobster Cavern’. It is an enormous place that caters for multiple tour groups. We enjoyed our lunchtime Lobster Roll with its generous filling of Lobstrer Mornay.
We were very amused by a group of Chinese Tourists at the next table. They ordered an enormous amount of food and then started to photograph every dish and plateful. They would stand to get a better shot, move around the table to get a photo from a different angle and sit members of the group in different seats so that they were in the photo as well. It must have been 15 minutes after the food arrived that they began to eat.
Just a little way out of town is Lake Thetis. It looks like an ordinary coastal lake but this one is the home to some Stromatilites. Lake Thetis is one of the few places (Shark Bay is another one) where stromatolites can be seen in Australia.
Stromatalites are rock-like structures which are some of the oldest living creatures on the planet. These ancient rocks contain fossils of stromatolites which can still be found on the shores of Lake Thetis.
There is an easy 1.5 km walking loop around the lake. Interpretative signage provided information about the fossils, geology (“Dunes on the Move”), flora, fauna and birdlife. The first 300m of boardwalk provided the best examples of Stromatalites in the lake.
From here, we head directly south to Perth for a three day stop and a catch-up with our family.
