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Published: April 4th 2007
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After another quiet night somewhere west of Hyden, we extracted the van from behind the trees that had kept us hidden from view overnight, put the pedal to the metal and set off towards Perth. Five hours later. the rental man at Travellers Autobarn was saying that nothing was ready but he could have something prepared by tomorrow, keen to extend our time a little and knowing that we would probably spend most of the following day sorting the insurance etc. out, we offered our services for the day and agreed to come back first thing the next morning.
We decided to head straight to our favourite carpark for the evening, a lovely spot by the sea at Scarborough Beach. Here we, along with several other campers had spent a pleasant night a week or so earlier, oh apart from some cheeky drunk chaps who had rocked our van to and fro on their way back from town! Anyway half way through dinner and the local ranger rocks up and extremely pleasantly suggests that we “aren’t going to be staying there overnight are we”. He did have the decency to explain why and the trouble they sometimes have from
less desirable van residents and suggested some alternative spots. As it turned out, we didn’t need a campsite at all, a friendly local fishing on the beach with his daughter heard of our plight and asked if we would like to come back to his place in town and camp on his drive! The explanation of this act of kindness was his desire to repay some ‘travelling debts’ such as rides he had hitched and people that had helped him out on travels when he was younger. Well, we couldn’t refuse and we followed Ian across town with our one headlight, now slightly paranoid about getting in trouble with the law after our 2nd brush with the park rangers - I don’t think we’d make great criminals... Anyway the evening only got better as we made ourselves comfortable on the sofa, Ian served up his homebrew and we enjoyed a rare chance to see some telly!
Next morning we got to work bright and early (it’s quite a novelty when you haven’t done it for 9 months!) and the shorthanded Patrick put us to work straight away cleaning vans and fitting fridges. In the middle of this I dropped
the dented van off at the local panel beaters and talked nicely to the ex-pat there about trying to repair the $800 bumper and some other bits and pieces rather than replace them. Ex panel-beater Patrick had reckoned we would need a new one, but luckily the local man doing the job didn’t agree and also helped us out by specifying for non-genuine parts. The quote of $1700 wasn’t what we needed, but could have been worse. In fact, having settled the bill, we were left in limbo slightly knowing that the big boss would review the quote later and might insist on genuine parts and hence bump up the final cost. We didn’t find out until we dropped the van off 4 weeks later that we had got away with it and ‘our’ kangaroo had only cost us £670….bargain!
After a long hard day at work (a bit of a shock to the system actually) we left in the dark at 7.30PM with our replacement van and got horribly lost in the northern suburbs of Perth whilst trying to find ourselves a proper caravan park for the night. We eventually found somewhere after a very irritable couple
of hours of driving, only to find that it closed its doors to new punters at 6PM or some similarly ridiculous time. So we were left with no other choice than to enjoy the free camping available in the beach car-park, just meters from the entrance to the park and blessed with far better views of the sea!
The next day we were relieved to break free of the city sprawl and get out onto the ‘open road’, not realizing that in a couple of weeks time the sight of ‘civilization’ in the form of more than ten buildings together would be a welcome sight. First stop on the agenda was the famous Pinnacles, some fine shaped rocks if ever I saw some….OK I promise not to rant about that again, I’ll just say that they were very reasonably priced at $10 each (I mean per person, not per rock). Anyway they were pretty cool and just to embed our carbon footprint a bit more firmly into the ground we got to drive around them. The best part about that was watching the occupants of the backpacker buses who had to get out and struggle around in the searing
heat because coaches weren’t allowed into the park…. cruel I know, but it did make us appreciate our independent means of travel even more.
Courtesy of my researcher Lexa, I can now offer you another fascinating insight into the geological background behind some of Western Australia’s most famous rocks - I give you the truth behind The Pinnacles:
The raw material for the limestone of the pinnacles came from the sea shells in an earlier epoch rich in marine life. These shells were broken down into lime-rich sands which were carried inland to form high, mobile dunes.
Winter rain leached the lime from these sands, cementing grains of sand together into lower level dunes. Vegetation became established and stabilized the dunes. At the same time, an acidic layer of soil and humus developed over the remaining quartz sand.
This acidic soil accelerated the leaching process, and a hard layer of calcrete formed over the softer limestone below. The calcrete formed caps on the pinnacles and this helps protect the softer limestone below.
Cracks formed in the calcrete layer and were exploited by plant roots. Water seeped down along these channels to leach away the
softer limestone beneath. The channels gradually filled with sand. The subsurface erosion continued until only the most resilient columns remained. The pinnacles that can be seen today have been exposed by the prevailing winds blowing away the sand.
Well I never, you guys will be professional geologists by the end of these blogs…..
After the excitement of the rocks we needed to regain our composure and drove to the quiet beachside hamlet of Jurien Bay, just a garage, a couple of shops and a campsite with bouncy castle! At last somewhere that has facilities worth $25 a night! It only took about 10 minutes for both of us to strain most of our muscles and retire to the van for a nice cup of tea, but it was fun for a while.
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