Tree Huggers & Desert Revelations

From Lancelin, we backtracked to Yanchep to spend a couple of nights. I was still waiting on a delivery in Perth, so wanted to stay within driving distance. However, as Sod's Law dictates, the waiting wasn't quite enough for the postman to even knock once, and we later moved on North regardless.

Yanchep National Park is one of Perth's weekend getaway locations. There are numerous walks, a boating lake, caves to investigate and a koala sanctuary. We were simply looking for a relaxing place to spend a day, & kill some time.

Now fully relaxed, we accepted the delivery wouldn't arrive in time, and pushed on North to Cervantes. Our first stop here was to see a piece of earth's history at Lake Thetis.

Lake Thetis is one of the few sites in the world where living stromatolites are found. Occurring as domes of limestone around the edge of the lake, stromaltolites are formed by the activity of microbial communities trapping and binding sediment and precipitating calcium carbonate from the water. OK? The interesting thing is that the ones here are over 1200 years old, and are the closest living organisms to the earliest life on Earth. It is believed that microbes similar to this, living over 3500 million years ago, are responsible for giving us an atmosphere. Good work, fellas.

The 'Pinnacles' are the poster pin-ups for WA tourism. They are easily accessible on a day trip from Perth and thus a viable option for those with just a short time in WA. The best time to view this rock forest is said to be around sunrise or sunset - we arrived about an hour before sunset.

The columns were formed thousands of years ago when ancient plant roots formed a weak cementation of calcite within the dunes. After that, it was just a question of time before shifting sands and the wind exposed them to tourists. To me, the area had an otherworldly feel to it, which would be perfectly apt for a Pink Floyd video. In a momentary lapse of reason, I jumped up on the pillars of rock, and let my air guitar sing 'Wish you were here', until I felt comfortably numb.