Mon, 9th to Tues, 10th May - Jurien Bay

We left New Norcia at around 8:30am and headed back toward the coast, stopping at a free camp at Moore River.  It was very crowded there so we continued on to The Pinnacles which are located 16kms south of Cervantes (250kms north of Perth), arriving at lunchtime.

The Pinnacles are thousands of limestone pillars, up to four metres tall, rising out of the landscape of yellow sand.  Some are jagged, sharp edged columns, rising to a point, others look like tombstones.  They may have originally been trees that over the years have been covered with sand and then uncovered, etc.  We walked the 1.4km track through the pillars ... it certainly was an eerie landscape. We were also extremely surprised to learn that you are able to drive through the Pinnacles, providing you unhook your vans or trailers and leave them in the car park.  It became obvious while walking that some of the turns between the pillars would be too sharp to enable you to tow your van through.

We then drove into Cervantes, but decided to head further on to Jurien Bay.  At Jurien we booked into a caravan park that was a short walk from the jetty. It was blowing a gale ... again!  'The Wrecker' accidentally cleared the trip meter today, but luckily it was at the 10,000km point, so we can still easily keep track of how far we have travelled.  Because it was so windy we ended up having dinner at the pub across the road.

Jurien Bay is 267kms north of Perth and has a population of approximately 1800.  It is a pretty place with a really nice marina area and lovely beaches.  We have noticed how steeply the waves wash the sand away from the beaches here, making the water deep in a very short distance.  Later, we discover the same thing at many beaches.

On Tuesday the weather was lovely again, so we caught up with the washing and then went fishing on the jetty.  We had heard that if you can't catch a fish at Jurien, then there is something wrong!  We caught heaps ... all very small and so many different varieties, most of which we didn't recognise.  I brought in the smallest leatherjacket I have ever seen at around 3cm long.

Later in the day we drove about 12kms north to another cheaper campsite called Sandy Cape.  It looked really nice, so we decided to head out there early the next morning.  After dinner we walked the jetty as we had noticed some fresh squid ink earlier in the day, however it was very quiet with only one fisherman out there who hadn't caught anything.

Rick walking through the Pinnacles

The Pinnacles with the coast in the background

Fishing on the Jurien Bay Jetty