Almost in Perth!

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Day 56 – Friday 24^th August – Cliff Head to Yanchep National Park (50kms north of Perth)

Nearing Perth, Luke is getting more excited by the hour about seeing his buddy Rory again. It’s very cute but slightly annoying as he is counting down the minutes until tomorrow afternoon! First stop today is Jurien Bay, a sleepy seaside town on the Indian Ocean Drive. We couldn’t find a coffee shop here so we drove on Cervantes, planning on calling in to see Kit from Ningaloo Station beach in his hardware store. Cervantes isn’t much bigger than Jurien Bay, having a general store, surf shack and take away store as its three main shops in the town, plus a coffee shop next to the caravan park and a crayfish business that offers tours of its processing plant in Cervantes. Kit’s hardware store is tucked away in an industrial estate and has a massive range of things for sale or hire. We were most impressed by his range of home brew kits and brewing paraphernalia. If we ever get into home brewing we will definitely contact him for some advice! Luke bought a fishing knife from Kit’s shop as a souvenir of the trip. It might come in handy once or twice before he is 18.

Cervantes is the base to enter the Nambung National Park, famous for the limestone Pinnacles in the desert. Tourism WA has built an impressive “interpretive centre” at this site which gives all the information you could ever need about the Pinnacles and the flora and fauna that inhabit the area. The Pinnacles are pretty cool to see if you are driving past but we wouldn’t rate them worth a four hour drive from Perth just to see them.

The plan for tonight is to stay in the last free campsite north of Perth, in the Yanchep National Park. Dodgy navigating took us the long way round to our selected spot, through a pine plantation. But our detour actually served to find us a much better place to camp. We found a sandy clearing in amongst all the pine trees and stopped to pitch the tent at around 5pm. Being in the middle of a commercial forest there was wood galore to burn on our campfire. We had plenty of time before it got dark to get ourselves set up around the campfire, prepare damper dough and find long sticks to cook our sausages on. Last night we were next to the beach, tonight we are back in the bush. Both very cool campsites and lots of fun. Hard to think we will be in a proper city tomorrow night – Perth here we come!

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