Sunset or Daytime at the Pinnacles: Which Tour Should You Book?

The short answer

If you want to understand the place, come in daylight. If you want to photograph it and see the Milky Way over it, come in the evening — and come between April and September, when full dark arrives early enough to be worth staying for. There is no departure that gives you both, because the two things happen at different hours.

Side by side

The case for daylight

The Discovery Centre is the only place that explains what you are looking at, and it shuts at 4:30 pm. Its displays, soundscapes and objects set out the geology, and half an hour in it changes the rest of the visit — you start seeing calcrete caps and root casts instead of interesting rocks.

A day departure also carries the activities. The wildlife park, the lobster lunch and the four-wheel-drive run over the dunes all need daylight, and they are what makes a ten-hour day feel like a day out rather than a drive. If you are travelling with children, this is usually the answer.

The case for the evening

Low sun across a flat sand plain is the whole reason this place photographs the way it does. Every pillar throws a shadow longer than itself, and at midday it throws almost none. That is not a preference, it is the difference between the picture you have seen and the picture you will take.

Then the sky. There is no town within 17 km and the nearest city is 200 km away, so the field goes properly dark. Three evening departures carry a telescope and one carries a mobile observatory with astro-binoculars.

The month decides more than the tour does

This is the part almost nobody checks before booking, and it is decisive.

Cloud is the real variable

It is the single most common complaint in the reviews of every evening departure here, and it is nobody’s fault. One reviewer describes paying a full fare and seeing neither the sunset nor the stars. Another describes the operator messaging in advance to suggest moving the booking by two days because the forecast was poor, which they did, and the night was clear.

That second story is the actual answer: almost every departure here refunds in full at twenty-four hours’ notice, so book, watch the forecast, and move if you need to. July brings 112 mm of rain across thirteen days, so in winter this matters as much as the dark-sky advantage does.

What each format actually costs you

Fares here run the other way from what most people expect: the evening departures are the cheaper half, at $127 to $182 a head, against $186 to $197 for the two daytime coaches. That is not a quality signal. The day tours carry a wildlife park, a lunch and a four-wheel-drive dune run, and those cost money; an evening tour carries a meal, a telescope and the road.

What neither price includes is your own time. Both formats are eight to eleven and a half hours door to door, because the desert is 200 km away and nothing changes that. If you value the hours as well as the money, the question is not which fare is lower but which ten hours you would rather spend. Park entry sits inside the fare on most of these departures either way, which visiting the Pinnacles sets out in full.

What you give up, either way

Take the day and you give up the light. The middle of the day is flat on a sand plain, the shadows that make every published photograph of this place are absent, and in summer you are standing in 30 °C with no shade. Take the evening and you give up the Discovery Centre, which is the only thing here that explains what you are looking at.

There is one more thing the evening costs, and it is worth saying plainly: you get home late. A nine-and-a-half-hour departure that leaves Perth in the afternoon finishes near midnight, and one reviewer describes being dropped at half past twelve. If you have an early flight the next morning, take the day.

What about doing both?

You can, and it takes a night in Cervantes rather than a second departure. Stay 17 km from the field and you can be among the pillars for last light one evening and first light the next morning, with the Discovery Centre in between, and no four-hour round trip attached to either. Nobody sells this as a package, which is why almost nobody does it.

The alternative is a private day, which can start early enough for the centre and stay late enough for the sunset. The private departures are the only format with that much rope.

The verdict, by traveller

• First visit, one day, April to September — evening. The light and the sky together are what people remember.
• First visit, December or January — day. You will not get real dark, and the heat is worse at noon than at six.
• With children — day, for the wildlife and the dune run.
• Photographers — evening, without hesitation.
• Interested in the geology — day, so the Discovery Centre is open, and read how the pillars formed on the way up.

Private tours of the Pinnacles Desert set out the pickup time, the hours in the field and the fare for both formats, so you can pick the hour first and the tour second. Pinnacles Tours has all of them in one grid.

One of each, side by side

Pinnacle Desert Sunset and Night-time Stargazing Tour from Perth

★ 4.4130 reviews8 hours

Dinner and afternoon teaHotel pickupLive commentary

From $182 per person

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Pinnacles Desert Sunset Dinner and Stargazing Tour

★ 4.81,121 reviews9 hours 30 minutes

Park fees includedDinner includedTelescope provided

From $160 per person

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4x4 Pinnacles Desert & Turquoise Coast Small Group Experience

★ 5.011 reviews10 hours

Park fees includedLunch includedMax 5

From $186 per person

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