Pinnacles Tours — Frequently Asked Questions
Answers about visiting the Pinnacles and about the guided departures that go there: the vehicle fee, the opening hours, the nine o’clock rule, the dark-sky months, the pickups and the refund windows. If you would rather compare the departures themselves, Pinnacles Tours lists every one with its price and its group cap.
How much do Pinnacles tours cost?
Between $127 and $1458 per person, and the spread is mostly about how long you are away rather than what you see at the desert. An evening departure with dinner and a telescope sits at the bottom; a seven-day loop up the coast with six nights of accommodation sits at the top. Pinnacles ticket prices for the standard day and evening departures cluster between $127 and $200.
Do I need a ticket to enter Nambung National Park?
You need park entry, and it is charged per vehicle rather than per person. A standard vehicle carrying up to 12 occupants pays A$17, a concession vehicle A$10, and a coach is charged per head instead. There is no separate ticket for the Discovery Centre and no online booking to arrange in advance.
Is park entry included in Pinnacles tour prices?
On most of the departures listed here, yes — the fare states national park fees inside it. The two that do not are both private days, and each card says so. Because the fee is charged by the vehicle, it is a small line on a tour fare and a much bigger one if you drive yourself with two people in the car.
Do I need to book Pinnacles tours in advance?
Yes, and for evening departures there is a second reason. The small-group vehicles cap at five to fifteen travellers and fill first. Booking also fixes your pickup time, which on several of these tours moves through the year because it is set against sunset rather than against a clock.
Can I cancel if the forecast turns?
All but one refund in full if you cancel at least twenty-four hours ahead. The seven-day coastal loop asks for six days instead, and its card states that before you click. That twenty-four-hour window is the practical answer to cloud: if the forecast turns the day before an evening departure, you can move.
What are the Pinnacles opening hours?
The Pinnacles Desert Discovery Centre is open 9:30 am to 4:30 pm every day except Christmas Day. The desert itself can be visited outside those hours, and visitors are expected to have left the park by 9 pm. That gap between the two is exactly what the evening departures are built around.
Can you visit the desert at night?
Yes. The desert is visitable after the Discovery Centre shuts, and the expectation is that you are out of the park by 9 pm. Four of the departures here are built for it, with dinner served in the desert and a telescope carried in, and one of them goes in twice — once in daylight and again after dark.
Can you see the Milky Way from the desert?
Often, and the month matters more than most people expect. Full astronomical dark arrives at about 6:51 pm in June and not until 9:00 pm in January, so a winter departure gets roughly two hours of genuinely dark sky before the park expects you out and a midsummer one gets almost none. Cloud is the other variable, and it is the single most common complaint in the reviews of every evening tour here.
When is the best time of year to visit?
For walking, April to October, when the coastal mean maximum sits between 19.6 and 26.4 °C. For flowers, August to October, which is when the surrounding heath comes out. For the sky, the winter half of the year, because the dark arrives earliest. July gives you all three and 112 mm of rain.
How long do you need among the pillars?
One to two hours is what these departures allow and it is enough for the 4.5 km loop and the 1.5 km walk. Longer is only worth it if you are photographing, in which case you want to be there for the last hour of light rather than for a longer stretch of the middle of the day. The private departures are the ones that let you set that yourself.
What are the limestone pillars made of?
Limestone — specifically the Tamala Limestone, which formed from lime-rich sand blown inland off the coast and deposited between about 1,500,000 and 10,000 years ago. Many of the pillars still carry a harder calcrete cap on top, and that cap is what protected the softer stone underneath while everything around it was leached away.
How tall are the limestone pillars?
The park authority describes thousands of limestone pillars up to 4 metres tall. Most are considerably shorter, and the ones that photograph best are usually between waist height and roughly twice your own. Nothing else in the sand plain is more than knee high, which is what makes them look larger than the measurement suggests.
How did the limestone pillars form?
Wind carried lime-rich sand inland and built dunes; acidic soil above accelerated leaching and a hard calcrete layer set over the softer limestone below. Plant roots exploited channels in that calcrete, water followed them down and dissolved the stone beneath, and the channels filled with quartz sand. Subsurface erosion continued until only the most resilient columns were left, and then the prevailing wind blew the covering sand away and exposed them.
Is the Pinnacles Desert wheelchair accessible?
The park is, in part: there is a 300 m Class 1 accessible path to a viewing platform, two accessible parking bays about 20 m from accessible toilets, and the one-way drive can be done without leaving the vehicle. Every guided departures listed here states that it is not wheelchair accessible, so driving yourself is the honest answer for a wheelchair user.
Which Pinnacles tour is best for a first visit?
It depends on which half of the day you want. If you want the Discovery Centre, the wildlife and the Lancelin dunes, take a day departure and you will be back in Perth by early evening. If you want low light, dinner in the desert and a telescope, take an evening one — but you will arrive after the Discovery Centre has shut.
How long is a Pinnacles tour from Perth?
Eight to eleven and a half hours for a single-day departure. The desert is 200 km north of Perth and the drive is about two hours each way, so four of those hours are on the road whatever else the day contains. The seven-day coastal loop is the one exception in this set.
Do Pinnacles tours pick up from my hotel?
Some do and some use a fixed kerbside point. Two departures collect from Perth city and Northbridge hotels on request, one collects from designated CBD hotels, and the private days come to your door. The rest start at a named address — the Bell Tower at Barrack Square, Crown Perth at Burswood, the Criterion Hotel on Hay Street or Jandakot Airport.
Is a private Pinnacles tour worth the difference?
It depends on your party size and on what you want to control. The private days here run from $407 a head to $855 for a whole vehicle carrying up to nine, so at five or more travellers the per-vehicle price is competitive with individual seats. What you actually buy is the timing: one listing states you may stay at the Pinnacles as long as you like, which no shared coach can offer.
Can I do the Pinnacles as a day trip from Perth?
Yes, and almost everyone does. All but one of the departures here is a single-day trip, and self-drivers regularly do it in a day as well. Leaving Perth around eight and returning between six and midnight is the normal shape, depending on whether you go for the daylight or the sky.
Can I pay the park fee by card?
Yes. Fees are collected at the park entry station on the way in to the Pinnacles Desert Discovery area, and the department's published rates are the same whether you pay there or hold a park pass. If you are on a guided departure, this is handled for you on most of them.
Is there a concession rate?
Yes. A concession vehicle carrying up to 12 occupants pays A$10 instead of A$17, a concession passenger on a vehicle over twelve occupants pays A$3.50 rather than A$8, and a motorcycle pays A$10. Those are the department's own published rates.
Do I need a separate ticket for the Discovery Centre?
No. Standard park entry covers the Pinnacles Desert Discovery Centre, its displays and its viewing platform. The centre also has a retail gallery and the only flushing toilets in the desert area.
Are there toilets at the Pinnacles?
Yes, at the Discovery Centre — flushable, unisex and wheelchair accessible, with accessible parking bays about 20 m away. There is nothing else along the one-way loop, so go before you drive it.
Is there food or water in the park?
No. There is no cafe and no drinking water in the desert area, so bring what you need with you. The nearest food and fuel are in Cervantes, 17 km away, which is also where two of the day departures stop for lunch.
Can I take a dog?
No. Dogs and other pets are not permitted anywhere in Nambung National Park. That is the department's own rule and it applies to the car park and the drive as well as the walking areas.
Can I drive my own car through the desert?
Yes. The Pinnacles Desert Drive is a sealed and signposted one-way loop of about 4.5 km with parking bays along it, and a normal hire car handles it without difficulty. The loop is the reason a self-drive visit works: you can stop where the pillars are thickest rather than where the car park happens to be.
Is there phone signal at the Pinnacles?
Coverage is patchy and depends on your carrier. Treat it as a place where a map you have not downloaded may not load, and take a photograph of your booking voucher rather than relying on opening an email at the gate.
Can I camp at the Pinnacles?
Not in the desert area itself. Cervantes has caravan parks and accommodation 17 km away, and staying there is the one way to see the pillars at first light and again after dark without a four-hour round trip attached to each.
Can I touch or climb the Pinnacles?
Walk among them, but never climb them. The park authority asks visitors to treat the pillars with respect and never to climb these fragile structures, and its own management plan records that some of the smaller formations and fossilised root casts have disappeared completely under visitor pressure. Keeping to the marked routes is what keeps the field intact.
Will I see wildlife at the Pinnacles?
Often, and most reliably early or late in the day. Kangaroos and emus are the two people photograph. The park and its neighbouring reserves hold at least eight native mammal species and 103 bird species, including Carnaby's black-cockatoo, which is listed as rare or likely to become extinct.
When do the wildflowers bloom?
August to October. The park authority describes the surrounding heath bursting into flower across that window, and it overlaps the last comfortable walking months of the year before the heat. September is the middle of it, with a coastal mean maximum of 21.4 °C.
Is this the same as Pinnacles National Park?
No, and this is worth being clear about. Pinnacles National Park is in central California. The Pinnacles this site covers are limestone pillars in Nambung National Park, 200 km north of Perth in Western Australia, and the two have nothing in common but the word. If you are searching for the Californian park, you are in the wrong hemisphere.
Still deciding?
The evening departures and the day departures are set out side by side with what each fare covers, and visiting the Pinnacles has the hours and the fees in one place.