Visiting the Pinnacles
Everything a visit here turns on: entry charged by the vehicle rather than by the head, a visitor centre that shuts at half past four, a desert that stays open after it, and a nine o’clock expectation that quietly decides how much dark sky an evening trip actually gets. If you already know you want a guided departure, Pinnacles Desert tours from Perth list every one with its price and its pickup point.
What a visit costs — A$17 a vehicle, not a head
Two figures, and they are separate. The first is park entry, which the Western Australian park authority charges and every visitor pays. The second is whatever you spend getting there, which is either a hire car or a seat on a departure.
| What you pay for | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Standard vehicle, up to 12 occupants | A$17 | Entry to Nambung National Park for everybody in the car. This is the figure that surprises people: it is per vehicle, so four travellers pay it once between them. |
| Concession vehicle, up to 12 occupants | A$10 | The same entry at the concession rate. |
| Vehicles over twelve occupants | A$8 per person | Coaches are charged per head instead, at A$3.50 for concession passengers. |
| Motorcycle | A$10 | Per machine. |
| An evening departure from Perth | from $127 | Pickup, the drive, a guide, dinner in the desert and, on three of them, a telescope. Most listings fold park entry into the fare. |
| A full-day departure from Perth | $186–$197 | Pickup, the drive, the desert and, depending on the day, a wildlife park, sandboarding or a lobster lunch. |
| A private day | $407–$1458 | A vehicle carrying nobody but your own party. One of them is priced for the whole vehicle rather than per person. |
There is no separate ticket for the Discovery Centre, nothing to book online in advance, and no timed entry of any kind. You pay at the entry station on the way in.
Opening hours, and the nine o’clock rule
The two things that are open here keep different hours, and the gap between them is the most useful thing to know before you book.
- The Pinnacles Desert Discovery Centre: 9:30 am – 4:30 pm, every day except Christmas Day. Displays, soundscapes, a retail gallery and the only flushing toilets in the desert area.
- The desert itself is visitable outside those hours, and visitors are expected to have left the park by 9 pm.
That is why a day departure and an evening departure are a genuine choice rather than a preference. Arrive at two in the afternoon and the centre is open and the light is flat. Arrive at six and the light is doing the work and the centre has been shut for ninety minutes. Nothing lets you have both on the same trip.
Sunset and the end of astronomical twilight at the Pinnacles, on the 15th of each month, in local time.
| Month | Sunset | Sky fully dark | Dark time before 9 pm |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 7:27 pm | 9:00 pm | almost none |
| February | 7:09 pm | 8:33 pm | almost none |
| March | 6:38 pm | 7:58 pm | under an hour |
| April | 6:01 pm | 7:20 pm | about an hour and a half |
| May | 5:34 pm | 6:56 pm | about two hours |
| June | 5:26 pm | 6:51 pm | about two hours |
| July | 5:37 pm | 7:00 pm | about two hours |
| August | 5:55 pm | 7:15 pm | about an hour and a half |
| September | 6:12 pm | 7:31 pm | about an hour and a half |
| October | 6:30 pm | 7:52 pm | under an hour |
| November | 6:55 pm | 8:24 pm | under an hour |
| December | 7:19 pm | 8:55 pm | almost none |
What is at the Discovery Centre
It sits in low heath at the edge of the yellow sand, and it is the only building in the desert area. Inside are displays, soundscapes, videos and objects that set out how the pillars formed and what the cultural and natural heritage of the area is, plus a retail gallery. Outside are the toilets, the car park and a viewing platform reached by a sealed path.
If the geology is why you came, go here first, because it closes long before the best light arrives. The how the pillars formed page covers the same ground if your departure gets in after 4:30 pm.
How long the desert really takes
One to two hours. That is what every departure here allows, and it is enough for the 4.5 km loop and the 1.5 km walk with time to stop. The reason a day out of Perth still runs eight to eleven hours is the 200 km of road at each end, not the desert itself.
Longer is only worth having if you are photographing, and then what you want is not more hours but the right ones — the last hour before sunset, or the first after sunrise, when the shadows are longer than the pillars. That is what a private departure buys, and one of them states in its own listing that you may stay as long as you like.
Ready to pick a departure?
Every guided tour compared on what it covers, how long you get among the pillars, and whether park entry is inside the fare.
Getting around inside the park
There are three ways to see the pillars and most visitors use two of them.
- The Pinnacles Desert Drive — a sealed, signposted one-way loop of about 4.5 km with parking bays along it. A normal hire car handles it. Because it is one-way, you cannot double back, so stop when you see something.
- The Desert View Walk Trail — 1.5 km on foot through the pillars, which is the only way to get a sense of how far above your head the tallest of them go.
- The accessible path — 300 m, Class 1, sealed, to a viewing platform.
The trails page has the distances, times and grades for each, and says which one to pick if you only have half an hour.
Accessibility — the 300 m Class 1 path
The park does better on this than the tours do, and the honest answer is that driving yourself is the accessible option. There is a 300 m Class 1 path to the viewing platform, two accessible parking bays about 20 m from the accessible toilets and 140 m from the Discovery Centre, and a one-way drive that can be done without leaving the vehicle at all.
Every guided departure listed here states that it is not wheelchair accessible. Two state that prams are carried and four that infant seats are available, and those details are on each card.
What you cannot do here
- Never climb the pillars. The park authority asks visitors to treat them 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.
- No dogs or other pets, anywhere in the park, including the car park and the drive.
- No food, water or fuel in the desert area. The nearest of all three is Cervantes, 17 km away.
- Stay on the marked routes. The sand between the pillars holds the fossilised roots that show how the whole field formed, and they are the first thing foot traffic destroys.
Driving yourself, or booking a departure
Both work, and the arithmetic is genuinely close. Entry is A$17 a vehicle, so a car with three or four people in it is the cheapest way to see the pillars by a wide margin, and you set your own hours. What you take on is 400 km of driving in a day, most of it on Indian Ocean Drive, and the last stretch home in the dark if you stay for sunset.
A departure hands that over, and on the evening trips it adds two things a hire car cannot: dinner cooked out in the desert and a telescope with somebody who can work it. Pinnacles Tours lists every departure with its pickup point and what its fare covers.