CERVANTES & JURIEN BAY, WA

28th June, 2012

Today we left Perth after a day of catch up with washing and energy after our wonderful week on the Cocos Islands.  Unfortunately, today my trusty Nikon stopped working.  Yep, just stopped altogether.  Hopefully it wasn't that wave down in Albany from the blowholes!!!!!

Anyway, I'll look into it over the next couple of days and see what is needed.......
         In the meantime, the little point & shoot Canon is about to get the workout of it's life.

These next two pics were at Wedge Pt on our way up to Cervantes.

 Some very nice boats, homes and views here

 I must say and obviously some good work available to tow-tractors!

Caution advised here - quite amazing it is to see that kangaroos, emus, echidna, wombats, koalas, lizards can read these signs.  Many a time we've noticed one of these signs, and then about 3 - 5 kms down the road there is another one, but lacking one of the animals, and then 3 or 4 kms further on the missing one is back again on the sign !!!????  Must be a territorial thing *lol* (or maybe not!)

 While at Cervantes, we took a drive out to Lake Thetis.  A raised boardwalk around the lake takes you on a short tour of the ancient lake which has organisms which go back millions of years and are still living here today.

Lake Thetis is one of only four known locations where Stromatolites can be found (Stromatolites are the world's oldest living fossils)

After the Lake, we took a drive out to the Pinnacles Desert in the Nambung National Park.  The area has varying coloured sands and there are thousands of limestone "pinnacles" here.  They range in size from up to 5 mtrs high and up to 2 mtrs or so at the base.

These have been formed thousands of years ago when ancient plant roots formed a week cementation of calcite within the dunes and they have been exposed recently by wind and shifting sands.

Surprisingly the desert is home to a huge quantity of native animals which are mostly nocturnal.

Many little tracks could be seen going from one pinnacle to another, but we didn't actually see any other than some galahs (apparently the galahs make nests in weathered holes in the pinnacle where they raise their young).

The next day we did a trip up to Jurien Bay to see how that area looked.  We had tossed up whether to stay at Cervantes or go on to Jurien Bay when leaving Perth, but perhaps we may have missed the Pinnacles if we had gone straight through to Jurien.

While walking along the new Jetty at Jurien Bay, we found this poor little guy, but we had no way to get down to him and he wouldn't let us get closed enough, so we told the local conservationist group at the Cafe and they would be able to probably net him and removed the line and hook which was caught in his feathers.



And you can see lots of dogs running around with no human on the end of their leads too!



Washed up on the beach - quite puffy little chap isn't he?

 The Old Jetty


Taking Shelter?




Just a few of the many cray boats in the bay

Talking to one of the deckies on an unloading boat, the cray licences have been greatly reduced and the quotas installed has reduced the trapping considerably, making sense to the number of cray boats available for sale along the western coast now.  This crew were making their last run for cray on Wednesday and then were heading to Exmouth for the Snapper run.

See you in Dongarra/Port Denison soon .............