The Pinnacles: Nambug National Park

The Pinnacles were definitely on our list of places to visit in Western Australia.  They feature in the book Are We There Yet? but the illustration had the kids fooled.  From the drawing they had the idea that there were only a few rock formations, they were in for a pleasant surprise.  First we stopped into the Discovery Centre at Nambug National Park for a quick look. 

Then we headed down the short path to see how much we could see before doing the driving circuit.

There were plenty of nearby formations to get lost in.  There isn’t a specific walking path and though you can’t tell it from these pictures, there were people wandering around everywhere.  It was so odd to be in this national park full of people when we’ve been to so many that were nearly empty.  But here in the Pinnacles we are only two hours north of Perth and it was the weekend.

There’s JitterBug photobombing in the background again.  I told the kids to find their favourite rock for a picture so they all went in different directions.

We couldn’t get over how yellow the sand is!  Some of the pictures in this post I used filters on for different effects, but this one below is what we saw.  Such yellow, yellow sand.  It was so striking.

Let’s play Spot the Toddler!  This area was up on a hill, all the formations were shorter (toddler height!), I suppose because the wind must keep them from getting any taller.  It was definitely windy here.

I got a cute emu bookmark.  Aren’t you happy for me?

We wandered around for awhile and just when the kids had a good game of hide and seek going we headed back to the car to do the drive through the park.

I promise there were other people there.  They must all be hiding amongst the rocks. 

TurboBug was determined to walk the entire length of the wall bordering the footpath.  No section was to be missed.

I’ll never finish this post if I try to write about each picture…so here we go, picture overload.

The evenly-spaced rocks in the foreground mark the edge of the ‘road’.

Look at the different colours!  That yellow sand, the white sand dune, and the ocean in the distance.  We saw many of these white, white sand dunes on the way to Cervantes.

At one point we started seeing a layer of pink at the bottom of the formations.

This reminded me of Delicate Arch in Arches National Park.  :)

A Few Stops Around Kununurra

Have I mentioned the boab trees lately?  They are everywhere across northern WA.  Some of them are huge!  The caravan park we stayed at in Kununurra had a large one that was estimated to be 2,000 years old!  It’s so interesting to see them as we are driving along, the young ones are much harder to pick out because they are so skinny.  They all seem to be in different stages of bloom, some have leaves, some have huge seeds (nuts) right now.

We spent one day looking around in Kununurra.  One of the places we visited was Ivanhoe Crossing.  The crossing itself is closed, I’m not sure if it’s open for part of the year or not.  There’s a big boulder in the road so that no one can take their chances at it.

When we visited there were several people fishing.  Not with poles, just lines they’d throw out in the water and reel back in by hand.

We didn’t venture too far out as the water was rushing quite fast out there.

I tried to surreptitiously get this picture of the rock blocking the road but of course right as I snapped the pic I was caught.  :)

Then we went into town to have a look at some of the pink diamonds that are mined nearby at Lake Argyle.  I wasn’t sure if they’d appreciate a family coming in for look when we weren’t intending to buy any diamonds, but they could not have been nicer.  One of the ladies gave us all kinds of interesting information about the diamonds and showed us several.  They were so friendly and happy to educate us, it was a real treat.  They gave the kids some little fake gems and told us take all the brochures we wanted.  There was a toy basket near the counter which kept TurboBug occupied.

The mine near Kununurra is the only diamond producing mine in Australia.  I think they said 90% of the world’s pink diamonds are mined here, but pink diamonds make up only .01% of the world’s diamonds.  Of all the diamonds mined in a year, there are only enough pink ones to fill a champagne glass, and only a few of those are the dusky rose colour which makes them very valuable.  She had a champagne glass filled with fake pink gems to illustrate the point.  She said the white diamonds mined worldwide in one year would fill a small bedroom.  She showed us the various colours of diamonds, blue, green, brown, etc.  She even showed us a pink diamond valued at $800k!

We also visited the Sandalwood Factory. 

We watched a short video to educated us a bit about sandalwood.  It’s a new industry in Australia, the first trees were only planted in 1999.  Kununurra was the first and is still the biggest plantation.  It’s also grown in the NT and QLD. 

After the video the lady in the shop told us they grow 420 trees per hectare, valued at about $1.6 million per hectare.   Wow.  It’s mostly exported to drug companies, they use it for all kinds of treatments which I don’t remember other than she mentioned eczema.

We had a browse around the shop, the oil is used to make all kinds of toiletries and other smelly items.  :)

They had some pieces that were like sculptures, so gorgeous.

Sandalwood trees need host trees so driving by you’ll see a mixture of trees with the sandalwood.

We were going to stop into the mini Bungle-Bungles (I can’t remember the real name), a local national park in Kununurra but it was too hot to do any walks by then so we skipped it.  The rock formations are gorgeous and really are reminiscent of the Bungle Bungles further south.

Our stay in Kununurra will be memorable in that it was just so hot there, at least 40 degrees every day we were there.  It was the end of the dry season but not yet the wet season.  They call it the build-up to the wet season.  Locals told stories of getting a metre of rain in one night during the wet season.  It was so hot, we were so thankful for the air conditioning in the van and the pool nearby.  We visited church while we were there (and discovered the sales lady from the diamond store was one of the singers up front!) and it was very casual.  Everyone was in shorts and flip-flops because how could anyone bother dressing up in that heat?  :)

Swimming at Edith Falls

After visiting the war cemetery and saying a quick hello to Charlie the Water Buffalo we hopped in the car and headed toward Katherine.  We had spent several nights in Katherine on our way north and were happy to head back to the same caravan park.  On the way we made a quick stop at Edith Falls for a swim.  It’s part of Nitmiluk National Park, the same national park that Katherine Gorge is in.

We donned our new snorkels & masks and headed in to the warm water.  One thing about travelling this late in the season- the water is always warm!  No crocs here, but plenty of fish and some of them were feeling a bit nippy that day.

We hopped in at the first water access point we came across.  This put us in a shallow area next to a bit of an island.  In the first picture at the top of this post you can get an idea of how far away we were from the falls.  I think I read that it was a 100 metre swim to reach the falls.  The part we were in felt more like a river.  There were lots of fish around, even coming up onto the steps where you get in the water which made them easy for TurboBug (2) to spot.  A good place for snorkelling as long as you are careful not to disturb the sediment at the bottom or your view will become very murky!

TurboBug wasn’t interested in staying in one place for long, so we walked down to the next water access point to have a look.  We’d both had a swim and neither of us were that interested in getting back in.  He loved the steps but it was obvious the water was deeper here.  I was glad I didn’t have to go in after him.

I seem to have several somewhat identical pictures of the falls.  :)  I know it doesn’t seem so from these pictures but there were several people around.  A few were making that 100m swim out to the falls.  There was a grassy picnic area and as TurboBug and I walked back to meet the others we passed a rather large tour group headed that way.  We got out just in time!

We had intended to walk up to the upper pools at Edith Falls, but it was boiling hot when we arrived.  We had our hats and water ready, but really we only had to get out of the car to realise we couldn’t put ourselves through that.  I’ve seen some stunning pictures and was sorry to miss it but it couldn’t be helped.  The kids enjoyed the swim in the plunge pool and I think they were relieved we didn’t make them walk in that heat.  We stayed maybe an hour or so and then got back in the car to finish our drive to Katherine.  We only spent one night in Katherine this time around as we wanted to get moving and make our way to WA.  We made sure to have one more lovely swim in those hot springs before we left!