Western Australian Outback

Today I woke up at 6:30 to meet my 7 AM ride to the Pinnacles and a very tiny portion of the Western Australian outback. I am so glad I went; I saw a ton of great wildlife, including kangaroos, tons of parrots including white-tailed black cockatoos, and a special lizard friend. About an hour into the trip we stopped by Yanchep National Park to see their koala colony. I particularly enjoyed this one since it seemed he had fallen asleep and slumped forward to faceplant into the tree. You can even see his arm just dangling there. Awwwww.

After driving for only an hour and a half we wound up in the outback (yes, the outback does technically include the coast; it's not confined to the desert). I had to take the obligatory picture of the red dirt road stretching to nowhere, or else it's not a true outback picture.


It's the beginning of wildflower season, so we stopped to get out and look for the flowers. There were tons of them and they were all so different and interesting. This one is a poisonous pea. Once again, I took lots and lots of pictures, and these are only a few.



Not long after the wildflower stop we arrived in Nambung National Park, home of the Pinnacles. These are limestone rocks that jut straight up from the sand. It was incredible to see them. Some were over 4 m (12 ft) tall. On most of them you could see fossilized tree roots, and some seemed to form various shapes. We got to walk through them, and sometimes you can find emu and kangaroo wandering among them as well. I can only imagine how awesome they must look at sunset.

I took tons and tons of pictures; here are a few.



This is me pretending to be a Pinnacle. It started raining a little here, so my camera got a smudge on it :(

After the Pinnacles, the guy who had been sitting up front asked me if I wanted to for a while. Since I was sick of being shoved in the back of the bus, I agreed. It turns out that our guide was incredibly nice and we got along really, really well. As we were driving I saw something crossing the road, and I couldn't believe my luck. I started flailing my arms around, shouting 'SHINGLEBACK!!!' when the guide looked at me, I said 'Bobtail, sleepy lizard!!' to get the point across, still flailing. Then (I can't believe I did this) I asked him if he could stop the bus so I could get out and bother the lizard. To my surprise, he actually DID. So behold: my first wild blue-tongue shingleback. Needless to say, it was very unhappy that I ran up to it and stuck a camera in its face.


Soon afterwards we arrived in Lancelin, a tiny fishing town known pretty much for its dunes. Apparently in the summer these are really crowded, but today there was almost nobody there. They were absolutely beautiful; bone white with perfect ripples, and they overlooked the Indian Ocean in one direction and the Australian bush in the other.




After driving around the sand dunes, it was time to go sandboarding! You essentially sit on a small board and slide down gigantic hills. I even tried going on my stomach (I will probably never get all the sand out of my hair) and standing up, but I wasn't really supposed to stand so don't tell anyone. You can sort of see the hill I went down in this picture, but I eventually upgraded to an even bigger, steeper one :D

On the ride home we saw lots of emu and a few kangaroos. We got back to Perth around 7, I said goodbye to the guides, and headed off for some delicious pizza. Now I will probably go to bed soon after I finish writing this, as I have to get up at 5:30 tomorrow in order to catch my flight to Darwin. I am really sad to leave Perth, but I am also looking forward to spending some time in the Australian rainforest. After this chilly weather and patchy rain, I'm off to the 90+ degree temperatures and ridiculous humidity of the Top End. Also, beaches where you can't swim because there are crocodiles. Woo!