Pinnacles Tour or Drive Yourself: An Honest Comparison

What each option actually costs

This is the whole decision in one table, and it is unusual for it to be this clean. Park entry here is charged per vehicle rather than per person, which means the self-drive cost barely moves as you add people and the guided cost moves in a straight line.

Guided figures are the lowest per-person fare in this set, multiplied. Entry is A$17 for a standard vehicle carrying up to twelve occupants.

The figure that surprises people is the entry fee, and it is worth saying twice: it is A$17 for the car, not A$17 each. Visiting the Pinnacles has the concession and coach rates.

Is the drive actually easy?

Yes, for the whole distance. Head north out of Perth on Wanneroo Road, which becomes Indian Ocean Drive, and turn right at the Pinnacles sign a couple of kilometres south of Cervantes. It is sealed the entire way, there is no gradient, and the one-way loop inside the park is sealed too.

Two caveats, both real. The road carries a lot of traffic for a two-lane highway. And kangaroos and emus are active along it at dawn and dusk, which is precisely when you would be driving home from a sunset. Getting there covers both routes.

What you get by driving that no tour can give you

• Your own hours. Every guided departure allows one to two hours among the pillars. In your own car you decide.
• The right light. You can sit in the field for the last ninety minutes before sunset without anybody calling time.
• The Discovery Centre and the sunset. A day tour gets the first, an evening tour gets the second, and only a car gets both.
• Turning back. With children, or in heat, being able to leave is worth a great deal.
• Cervantes overnight. Stay 17 km away and you can have first light and full dark without two 400 km round trips.

What a departure gives you that a car cannot

Four things, and they are not trivial. Somebody else drives 400 kilometres, which after a long day in the sun is the part most people underrate. Dinner is carried into the desert and cooked there on the evening departures — not a lunchbox on a coach, an actual meal at the field.

A telescope arrives with a person who can work it, and three of the evening departures carry one. And there is commentary for two hours in each direction, which turns the road from dead time into part of the day. Reviewers on the small-group departures consistently say the drive was the surprise.

Does a guide change what you see?

At the desert itself, moderately. The field has no named formations and no route to get lost on, so nobody needs a guide to find things. What a guide adds is knowing what you are looking at — the calcrete caps, the root casts, the sequence that produced the whole field — which the Discovery Centre also does if you get there before 4:30 pm.

At night, a guide changes it completely. Finding your way around a southern sky is not something most visitors can do unaided, and the difference between looking at stars and being shown them is the whole value of an evening departure.

The hidden costs of driving

Three, and none is large on its own. A hire day in Perth, which you may be paying anyway. Fuel for 400 kilometres. And whatever you buy in Cervantes because there is nothing to buy in the park — no water, no food, no fuel.

The fourth is not a cost but it belongs here: the last two hours of a self-drive day are the drive home, and if you have stayed for the light they are in the dark. The safety page sets out what that involves.

The hidden costs of a departure

Also three. The day is eight to eleven and a half hours whatever the fare, because the distance is the distance. The pickup point may not be near your hotel — departures here leave from five different addresses across Perth. And lunch or dinner is included on some and excluded on others, which is the single most common source of surprise.

Each card on Pinnacles Tours states which way its fare falls, and the format comparison sets the bands out side by side.

Which one for a solo traveller?

A departure, usually. The per-vehicle entry fee is the whole self-drive advantage and it does not help one person, so you are paying a hire day and 400 kilometres of fuel to save a $127 seat. Add that you would be driving both ways alone, and the sums and the day both point the same way.

The exception is if you already have a car for other reasons, in which case driving gives you the hours and costs you almost nothing extra.

Which one for a family?

The car, in most cases. Four people pay entry once, you can leave when attention runs out, and the pushchair fits. What you lose is the four-wheel-drive dune run at Lancelin, which no hire car may do and which is reliably the part children talk about afterwards.

If that matters more than the flexibility, the day tours that include it are the answer. The with-kids guide has the age rules for every departure.

Which one for photographers?

Drive, if you can. The photograph everybody wants is the last hour before sunset, and the only way to be certain of standing in the field for all of it is to have the keys. The one-way loop means you cannot go back for a frame, so you want to run it more than once, and no timetabled departure will.

The counter-argument is the sky. If the Milky Way is the target rather than the stone, an evening departure with a telescope and a guide is better than being alone in a dark car park, and the stargazing guide explains which months make it worth it.

The option nobody sells: stay the night

Cervantes is 17 km from the pillars and has fuel, beds and food. Stay one night and the two things this attraction forces you to choose between stop being mutually exclusive: the Discovery Centre and the field in daylight on the afternoon you arrive, then the sunset, then the sky, then the field again at first light before anybody else is there.

It costs a night’s accommodation and saves a 400-kilometre round trip. Nobody packages it, which is why almost nobody does it. A guided departure is the alternative if a second day is not available.

What driving actually involves, end to end

Worth setting out plainly, because “two hours each way” hides some detail. You leave Perth on Wanneroo Road, which becomes Indian Ocean Drive somewhere north of Yanchep and stays that way for the rest of the run. It is a two-lane sealed highway carrying more traffic than two lanes really want, with long straights and occasional overtaking lanes.

You will pass Yanchep at about 50 km, Guilderton at 90, Lancelin at 130 and Nilgen at 160. The turn for the Pinnacles is signposted from both directions a couple of kilometres south of Cervantes, and from there Pinnacles Drive runs 17 km to the entry station. You pay there, and the loop starts at the Discovery Centre car park.

Coming home, the only genuinely different thing is the wildlife. Kangaroos and emus are active along this road at dusk, and if you have stayed for the light you are driving into that window. The safety page sets it out.

What it costs to hire a car for the day

The honest answer is that it depends on what you were doing anyway. If you already have a car in Perth for the rest of your trip, a Pinnacles day adds fuel for 400 kilometres and A$17 at the gate, and that is genuinely all. Against a $127 seat, the car wins for one traveller.

If you would be hiring specifically for this, add a day rate and any insurance excess you are not comfortable carrying. That is the number that pushes a solo traveller towards a seat and leaves a family firmly with the car. There is no toll road on this route and no parking charge at the desert.

The honest verdict

Two or more travellers, daylight, and no strong feeling about the night sky: drive. Solo, or the evening, or the Milky Way, or simply not wanting to drive 400 kilometres: book. Five or more travellers who want their own hours: look at a private vehicle, where one listing is priced for the car rather than the head.

There is no wrong answer here, and the difference in cost is smaller than the difference in how the day feels. Pinnacles Tours sets out the fares, the pickup points and the hours in the field for every departure.

Frequently asked questions

Departures that behave most like your own car

Pinnacles Desert Private Day Tour

★ 5.031 reviews8 to 10 hours

Entry includedYour group onlyMax 10

From $407 per person

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Private Pinnacles Premium Day Experience

★ 5.024 reviews8 to 12 hours

Entry includedYour group onlyMax 7

From $475 per person

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Private Pinnacle Day-Tour; Pinnacles,lobster shack & Lancelin

★ 5.09 reviews10 hours

Entry includedYour group onlyMax 9

From $855 per person

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