West Australia - part time Sand grouper

Perth, Western Australia

Once again I am having an one way ticket, not knowing what will happen this time and where I will end up. Landing in Perth was quite funny cause they searched my bags, for fruits. You are flying more than 5 hours and you’re still in the same country, but not allowed to take any fruits with u. I am so curious about western Australia cause I know so less about it. I just know I wanna see a few things on the way up to the northern part.

Perth is a pretty city with nice people. I had the feeling that everything is going much slower here.

I discovered the city with the mixed old / modern architecture and his beautiful gardens everywhere.

Hoping to get a lift up the coast I spotted one lift offer and lucky me, he didn’t left yet. So we hooked up with another guy, got along very well, and decided to do this trip up the coast in this vast part of Australia.

Vast = Huge = 0,5 Person/km²!

And most of it is desert, so that’s maybe why the people here got the name “sand groupers”.

We packed our stuff in Antony´s car, which Is an awesome 4 WD Toyota Jeep, and made our way out of Perth. Heading north I asked if we should take the off-road track on the coast, naively thinking it would take the same time to our destination.

Unfortunately we couldn’t find the beginning of the track, we just stood in front of a huge sand dune with some tracks on it and a broken fence with signs “Danger; do not cross, ..your risk, ..poisoned… ” on it..

So we asked around but got very fanciful answers,…for these 60 km we will need between 3 and 6 hours.

Even the “tourist office” woman didn’t know ( probably having 1 tourist a year knocking on her door ) but gave as a funny map and acted very weird, totally confusing us with stupid facts and even told us not to go this way because we not gonna make this till the sunset.

Well if u tells these words to 3 adventurous people, it’s for sure that we ARE going this way. :)

Namburg Nationalpark

We all had a big grin in our faces and couldn´t wait to go so we took the way through the fence, over the sand dune and right into a big adventure. We found everything but the way, we just followed some tracks over dunes and rocks, past plants we’ve never seen before and incredible landscapes, it was like driving around on the moon.

Finally we found the ocean and followed the beach road along theocean with the sun in our faces and Johnny cash in our ears.

We just had 2 hours till the sunset but we were VERY keen to get to this unique place. The way was getting worse, we crossed soft sand and huge rocks on the “road” , I am sure the stage coach was the last vehicle before us.

The Pinnacles Dessert

Punctually to the sunset we arrived ,after 3 hours, at our destination. The Pinnacles.

They look like hundreds of soldiers growing out of the ground but in fact they are limestone formations, some were up to 3 m in high.

We jumped out of the car, run on a hill to watch the sun going down and finally got eaten by the ocean. The colours were amazing and on the other side of the sky the moon came up.

I never expected deep temperatures and got just a thin sleeping bag with me. BIG mistake. We build up our small tent at a camping ground in Jurien and I told the boys to keep me warm.

It was freezing outside, 5° C. the boys were very kind and offered me a jacket and a little mattress but it didn´t help at all. My whole body was shivering so I decided to sleep in the car.

Couln´t sleep, went jogging at 5 am to warm up and had a nice sunrise.