Things to Do at the Pinnacles

The desert takes an hour or two. The road it sits on takes the rest of the day, and it carries a sandboarding dune, a lake full of living microbial reefs and a swimming beach inside the same national park. Here is each of them, and which departures actually stop. Guided tours of the Pinnacles Desert set out the stops for every one.

Walking among the pillars

The main thing, and the one everybody underestimates. The 1.5 km Desert View Walk Trail puts you down among the pillars rather than looking at them through a car window. That is the only way to register how far above your head the tallest of them go. Allow forty-five minutes to an hour. Stay on the marked route: the sand between the columns holds the fossilised root casts that show how the field formed.

Driving the Pinnacles Desert loop

A sealed, signposted one-way loop of about 4.5 km with parking bays along it. It is the right choice in the middle of a hot day, with a small child, or with anybody who cannot walk far, and it reaches parts of the field the walk does not. Because it runs one way you cannot go back for a photograph, so stop when you see it.

Sandboarding the Lancelin Sand Dunes

The Lancelin Sand Dunes sit seventy-five kilometres south of the desert. They are white, steep, and big enough to be a genuine activity rather than a photo stop. Four departures stop there and three provide boards; one adds a forty-five-minute four-wheel-drive run over the sand. It turns up again and again in the reviews as the surprise of the day, from people who booked for the pillars.

Lake Thetis and its about 3,370 years-old reefs

Lake Thetis sits four kilometres outside Cervantes and holds living microbial reefs, dated at about 3,370 years. The state trails authority calls them stromatolites and the state tourism body calls them thrombolites. A 300-metre boardwalk reaches the viewing points and a 1.5-kilometre track loops the lake. They look like grey rocky lumps in shallow water. Very few places in the world have living marine ones.

Swimming at Hangover Bay and Kangaroo Point

Hangover Bay sits eight kilometres from the pillars inside the same national park, with Kangaroo Point a little further along the same road. Both are sheltered white-sand beaches, and Hangover Bay in particular is a stop on three of the evening departures, usually late in the afternoon on the way to the desert.

Watching for emus and kangaroos

Kangaroos and emus are the two animals visitors photograph here. Both are most active early and late rather than in the middle of the day. The park and its neighbouring reserves record at least eight native mammal and 103 bird species. Among them is Carnaby’s black-cockatoo, gazetted as rare or likely to become extinct. One day departure adds a wildlife park on the way north, where koalas, wombats and hand-fed kangaroos are the point.

The August to October flowering

The low heath around the desert flowers from august to october. The park authority describes it as a spectacle worth timing a visit for. It also overlaps the last comfortable walking months of the year, so this is the one window where the flowers, the temperature and a reasonably early dark all line up. The month-by-month page has the figures.

Watching the sun go down over the field

Different from the stargazing, and worth separating. Sunset here is about what the light does to the stone rather than what happens in the sky: low sun rakes across a flat plain and every pillar throws a shadow longer than itself, which is the photograph the whole place is known for. Sunset moves from 5:26 pm in June to 7:27 pm in January, so the hour to be in the field moves with it.

You do not need a tour for this if you are driving — you need to be inside the park for the hour before sunset and out of it by 9 pm. What a departure adds is that somebody else drives home afterwards.

Stargazing after the Discovery Centre closes

The nearest town is 17 km away and it is small, so there is very little light pollution over the field. Four departures are built around this, with dinner cooked in the desert and a telescope carried in. What decides how much you see is the month rather than the tour: full dark arrives at 6:51 pm in June and 9:00 pm in January, and the park expects you out by 9 pm.

Rock lobster in Cervantes

Cervantes is a rock-lobster town, and two day departures build lunch around it. One serves fish and chips with a tour of the processing operation; the other takes a coastal seafood lunch. Reviewers are split on the processing tour and consistent about the food. It is also the last fuel, water and food before the park. Pinnacles Tours shows which departure stops where.