July 6th: Up early to go on a 7.30 am for the Painted Desert Tour from the farm with manager James, in the property’s old Landcruiser, through the property past the Aberdeen Angus’s and Murray Greys, and lupin and the lucerne crops, emus and and kangaroos to the border of the Nambung National Park and the Painted desert where the property owner Brian has an arrangement that he can take small supervised groups into the desert to see the small Pinnacles. These Pinnacles are apparently 500,000 years old- “too young” to interest most geologists! The Pinnacles in the Painted desert are much less exposed than those on Nambung National Park, so they are much shorter above sand level, but interestingly they are all the same height, indicating that they were formed at the same time. It was cold and windy but very atmospheric to see these strange structures, some with what looked like conglomerate rock on the top and others where it was on the bottom below the layers of sandstone. This conglomerate rock layer was supposedly formed at the bottom of a glacier from the terminal moraine scree. We saw shells remaining intact on the sand and not yet broken down into fine sand particles. There were many white backed swallows diving around the Pinnacles.
We then went to Nambung National Park to see the more well known and much taller Pinnacles, whose origin is still unknown, but they are formed from calcarenite Tamala limestone from when the area where they are found was a sea bed, and the deposits are formed from wind blown sand. Wind erosion has shaped the Pinnacles to their vertical shapes as the softer parts of the Pinnacles are blown away.
We then visited Cervantes and the Lobster Shack- an amazingly successful business started and run by the Thompson family over 3 generations of crayfishermen. Most of their business is export to China Russia and EuropeAt least 200 people were eating there when we arrived at 2pm and apparently they serve 600 meals a day with more in peak season! They own 14 crayboats and employ 60 people. I bought us a cooked crayfish for dinner ($39 for a medium sized cray) as the weather is too inclement to be cooking outside!
We then visited Lake Thetis to see Stromatolites on a much smaller scale than in Hamelin Pool, Shark Bay. As well as white backed swallows there were sandpipers of some sort around the lake.
Then the wind and rain really set in and we enjoyed our delicious sweet crayfish in the van!
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