Our WA Trip - Part Four - The Pinnacles, the Pink Lake, and our Brush With Royalty

And I'm back. Jen and I got sucked into watching the men's final at the Australian Open Tennis tournament on TV last night, so I never quite made it back to my computer yesterday as originally planned. Not that either of us are tennis fans or anything... but somehow, we had to watch this! The tournament was taking place right here in Melbourne and we could've gotten grounds tickets (which, like the grounds tickets for the Melbourne Cup, would have allowed us to mingle with a huge drunken mob and see the game on a Jumbotron) - but we were quite happy to stay home and enjoy our living room, large screen TV, and comfy couches. What a rough life. :-)

So. Back to the WA story. On January 12th we headed north out of Perth along the Great Coastal Highway (there seem to be a lot of things in this country with the title "Great" in front of them), heading to Cervantes and the Pinnacles Desert. We stopped briefly back at Hillary's Boat Harbour to buy rashie shirts. I really, really didn't want to repeat the back-frying experience I had when I went snorkeling in the Florida Keys. So hey, if these shirts would help, so be it! I had to buy a guy's shirt in the end 'cause the girls shirts don't fit me, but I love mine! Methinks it's gonna become part of my canoeing attire.

At first, as we drove out of Perth, we found ourselves in more of the rolling farmland that has become so familiar to us. In fact, I remember commenting at one point that it seemed somehow unfair that we'd endured the trip all the way across the continent to find landscape that looked pretty much exactly like what we find outside of Melbourne! The big difference was that the land was really, really dry. I mean, in Victoria at least there was some green in the fields, if only a little. In Western Australia, the only green was in the leaves of the gum trees. There were no green fields at all. How the farmers manage to grow anything out of that parched ground is completely beyond me. There's a good shot of what much of the farmland looked like in my album "Western Australia - Part Two" - the one with Jen standing beside the statue of Prince Leonard. Every time we thought the landscape couldn't get any drier, it somehow did!

Getting a bit ahead of myself. The whole royal visit comes a little later in this narrative. We soon left the farmland behind and exchanged it for a scenery made up completely of low, scrubby bushes. It was cool because there were all these low, rolling hills, so every time we crested a hill we could see for miles and miles in every direction. We started out fairly far away from the ocean, but as we traveled north, we kept getting closer, until at times we could see the sea from the tops of the hills. Eventually we took a left turn off the highway and passed a wind farm and headed for the coast. There were all these ENORMOUS sand dunes as we neared the water; they were made of white, white sand, as opposed to the red dirt of the surrounding land. The dunes were likely several stories tall, and in places overtaking the vegetation. What a strange land!

The town of Cervantes itself is teeny tiny. There was a gas station, a general store, a pub, the hostel, and a few houses, and that was about it. So it wasn't exactly hard to find our way to the hostel. We checked in, dumped our stuff in our room, and headed to the general store to buy some breakfast and lunch foods. GOOD GODS. You could tell we were away from the city - the prices were astronomical! But it's not like we had a lot of choice (there being a grand total of one store and all), so we shut our eyes, gritted our teeth and spent $25 on food which should have cost us $10. Then after a quick lunch back at the hostel, we were off to Nambung National Park and the Pinnacles.

The Pinnacles Desert is... eerie. It's made up of thousands of limestone pillars, sticking up out of the sand, at the edge of the sea. Ha! When I first learned about the Pinnacles, I thought that we would be heading to a point in the Outback, away from the ocean. So I was more than a little surprised to discover that the Pinnacles were almost literally on the beach. Turns out that the Pinnacles were formed from ancient sand dunes, as lime-rich sea shells from long ago were compressed and tuned to stone. I found a nifty 3D website which lets you do a bit of a tour through the Pinnacles, so check it out: http://panoramas.dk/fullscreen5/f52-australia-pinnacles.html. When we were there in the afternoon, the wind was howling through the desert and the sand was being kicked up like there'd be no tomorrow. I'm glad we were both wearing capris, because the force of the sand being hurled against my legs was... uncomfortable... to say the least. It basically felt like we were being sandblasted.Now I understand a bit better about the danger of sandstorms. I later found sand everywhere imaginable, including inside my pockets and in the zipper of my pants. Good grief.

On the other hand, I'm really, really glad it wasn't hot. Jen and I wandered around the Pinnacles formation for at least a couple of hours, admiring the strangeness of the landscape and wondering whether or not any movies had ever been filmed here. The place would sure be a good backdrop for an alien planet! Eventually though we knew we'd have to leave and head back to town to find some dinner. We stopped briefly along the way at Kangaroo Point, to walk along the beach. So I can now officially say I've dipped my toes in all of the world's oceans, since the west coast of Australia is on the Indian Ocean. Cool, huh?

We ate dinner at a little cafe that was right next to the general store. Although it was empty when we arrived, it filled quickly with a mix of tourists and locals, and we were glad we'd arrived when we did. We both ate way too much for dinner (the ice cream did us in), so we afterwards we headed to the main beach in Cervantes to walk it off. I swear Jen is a dirt magnet. Or at least, her favourite blue shirt sure is! While we were finishing off the ice cream, she managed to dribble chocolate on her shirt. Again. (This shirt apparently can't remain clean for more than about 5 minutes after she puts it on. Of course the fact that there was maybe a grand total of 2cms of stick for her to hold onto on her ice cream didn't help. Poor Jen.)

We drove back out to the Pinnacles to watch the sun set in the desert. We weren't disappointed. Although it wasn't the most spectacular sunset colour-wise, the newest crescent moon was high in the sky and I got some cool pics as the sun finally went down. The place was even more eerie in the dusk, as all the colours changed and became more muted. There were also far fewer people out there with us, which was nice.

Jen drove us SLOOOOOWLY back to Cervantes, in the dark, as we were afraid of hitting wildlife. This is a serious danger throughout Australia. But the only wildlife we saw was a fox and a rabbit - hardly local! We had a few issues when we got back to the hostel. Both of us badly needed a shower, as we were completely covered in a fine layer of sand and grit. (Note to self - sunscreen and blowing sand is a BAD combination.) However the hostel's shower stalls left a lot to be desired. Jen got in under the water first, and was going along just fine, until I stepped into the stall next door and turned the water on. That cut off the hot water to her stall, and the screaming...! Ha ha! It's not like I had it easy, either... the shower head in my stall was on a flexible arm, that would not stay put in a suitable position to get anything above my shoulders wet. I did a lot of ducking. And then, just to make life more complicated, the light in the bathroom was apparently on a motion sensor - aimed at the sinks, not the shower stalls - so halfway through our showers the lights went out and it was very, very dark. Ah well. We survived the ordeal in the end, and it sure felt good to crawl into bed!

The next morning, I woke up to find Jen sleeping on an upper bunk. When we'd gone to bed the night before, she had been on the other lower bunk. What the...? Apparently, not long after she'd closed her eyes to go to sleep, she'd rolled over and realized that there were little bugs crawling all over her pillow! YUCK! So she'd hightailed it outta there and slept on the top bunk for the rest of the night. We were not impressed with the hostel's owners - when Jen went to complain about the bugs, the grand sum total of their reaction was "oh". Harrumph. We have no idea what the bugs were, but I started worrying, for the first time, about bed bugs. Icky!

Anyhow. Time to continue northward. We had to gas up the car. So for those of you in Canada who may be complaining about fuel prices, let me tell you - gas in rural Western Australia was sitting at $1.67/litre. OUCH! Cost us almost $60 to fill up the tank on our itty bitty compact car. We only had another 2 hours or so to drive to get to our next destination, Geraldton. This is a fair-sized town about 450kms north of Perth, and the centre of the rock lobster fishery in Western Australia. The hostel in Geraldton was right on the beach, in an old, rickety, 2-storey building. We got there just after the check-in desk closed for the afternoon, but we had reservations and it'd be open again at 4pm. So we took our lunch stuff down to the beach and enjoyed munching our sandwiches and watching the waves roll in, then we got back in the car and headed off on the day's adventures, which we figured would involve another couple of hours' driving around the Geraldton area.

When we were researching for our Western Australia trip, Jen had come across a reference to Prince Leonard of Hutt River, a sheep station owner who seceded from Australia in 1970 and formed his own country. This struck us as so odd that we decided to try and find Hutt River. Now, it's not like there are signposts in this part of WA pointing the way to "Australia's Second-Largest Country", and the directions in Lonely Planet were pretty crummy. So we ended up on this lonely highway on our way to Port Gregory, where Jen had read that there was a pink lake. Random piece of trivia - the reason the lake is pink is because it is full of some microorganism that produces beta-carotene by the ton. There is an extraction facility at Port Gregory, and the 'mined' beta-carotene sells for something crazy like $24,000/kg!

No, I'm not kidding. It really was a pink lake! I'm talking bubble-gum, Spark pink. How cool is that? It is a salt lake and we could see the crust of salt all around the edges - if we were back in Canada, I would've sworn that there was ice all around the edges of the lake. We pulled the car over and got out to take a closer look. I know some of you have already heard about the lake-biting incident. So here goes. The edge of the salt crust/lake LOOKED completely solid. Not so much! Jen took a step down onto it, so I could snap a picture of her on the lake, and immediately sank right through up to her knees in putrid smelly mud! I was laughing so hard I could hardly breathe or move, let alone help Jen. She eventually worked her way free and made it back to solid ground, but her legs and sandals were a mess. I went back to the car and got one of our water bottles and a bandanna and we cleaned her off as best we could - and that's when we discovered that Jen had actually cut herself on the salt crust as she sank. It was just a scrape, but it did bleed - and that leads us back to the fact that this has gotta be the first time I've ever heard of someone getting BITTEN by a lake! Ha ha ha!

(Yes, Jen is still talking to me.)

We got back into the car and I drove the rest of the way to Port Gregory, which was really just around the corner, in order to find a place to finish cleaning Jen up. We ended up back down at the beach, where Jen waded into the ocean - wincing as her scrapes hit the salt water. We stopped at the general store to buy a much-deserved ice cream, and to get directions to Hutt River from the locals, and then we were off again, back on track for our original adventure!

The Principality of Hutt River turned out to be WAAAAY down a nice, red-dirt road (all the dirt here is red, it's crazy) - about 30kms down. Let me fill you in a bit about Hutt River. Back in 1970, the owner of this sheep station, Leonard Casley, got fed up with the Australian government over wheat quotas. So he seceded from the country. I don't know what legal loophole he found, but he did, and he is legally his own country. Apparently the Western Australian government threatened to come in with tanks, and he pointed out that they couldn't do that if he was still a part of Australia, and if they were acknowledging that he was a separate country then they couldn't invade him anyway 'cause he'd haul them into the UN, and they backed down!

So yeah. Now Hutt River is its own little country - larger than the Vatican, smaller than Lichtenstein, with about 20,000 head of sheep and 22 permanent residents. It's got its own post office, government building, church, and museum. Prince Leonard stamped our passports with the appropriate entry and exit visas (yes, these are legit) and showed us around. He's made up his own money, his own stamps, and his own constitution. It was just so surreal I can't even put it into words. His wife, Princess Shirley, asked us if we'd like a cup of tea. They do get tourists/visitors regularly, so they have a tea shop. We declined the offer (it was blazingly hot) but did admire Prince Leonard's collection of awards and medals - some of which are exceedingly rare and have only been given out to a very, very few people.

I should point out that the man has a PhD in physics and is absolutely brilliant. He's currently taking the federal government to court over who owns the land in WA. Back when Perth was established, the British government only proclaimed the area around Perth for England - not the rest of the state. In fact, apparently nobody's claimed the rest of the state - officially. So Prince Leonard recently proclaimed it for Hutt River. Not sure where this is going, but if he wins the court battle, he will suddenly be one very, VERY rich man - Western Australia has HUGE deposits of minerals and precious metals. Anyway, at the end of our visit we got to shake hands with royalty - and there are pictures on facebook to prove it!

What a strange, strange day. It was a long drive back to Geraldton, and we got there just in time to dive into the local grocery store and snatch dinner at the Thai restaurant underneath the hostel. I'm astounded at how fast the temperature changes here - when we left Hutt River, it was crazy hot and we were more than glad to have an air conditioned car. When we stepped out of the car in Geraldton, I was wishing I had my sweater!

The next day we would be heading to Shark Bay, a place I've wanted to see for a long time. And which I will tell you about - tomorrow!