This episode we leave our home city of Perth (in Western Australia) for the start of our big lap around the country. We say a difficult goodbye to family and head north to our first farm stay, we also visit the Pinnacles National Park and Milligans Island campground. We were keen to leave the cold of Perth behind us so we pushed north fairly quickly. We contended with getting to know how quickly we could get through the water in our water tanks and the power setup in the caravan on overcast days. Thankfully we had a great start to the trip!
Fatfield Farm Stay. Location: 135 Marine Drive, Jurien Bay, Western Australia
We stopped at Fatfield Farm Stay on Night 1 of our big lap. It’s a two and a half hour drive north of Perth and is ideal for families. We found them on the WikiCamps App. The hosts Pauline and Phil were very inviting with an incredible ability to remember all of our names, in addition to the other family of seven staying, who had five boys! It’s a paid campground ($20 per night, no power/ water) on private property and we had our own huge gated paddock with sheep, chickens and turkeys wandering around.
We enjoyed our first campfire of the trip with marshmallows. The boys splashed in the muddy puddles and doted on the animals. In the morning we enjoyed feeding the sheep, hunting for freshly laid eggs, picking vegetables from the garden and tasting honey from the hive. Highly recommend staying at this lovely farm, either for a night stopover or a few nights as a getaway from Perth. Our kids loved it so much! Happy children, happy parents!
The Pinnacles Desert Lookout and Drive, Nambung National Park. Location: Pinnacles Drive, Nambung (21km south of Cervantes, 198km north of Perth)
The boys enjoyed their first visit to the pinnacles, an area where thousands of limestone pillars up to 4m high, rise from yellow sand. There’s a 4.5km drive trail with a lookout about halfway through. There is also the Pinnacles Discovery gift shop and information centre located near the entrance car park, trailer parking is also available as no trailers are allowed on the drive trail.
The pinnacles are fascinating structures formed naturally. Originally the area above where the pinnacles now stand were sand dunes, when it rained lime leached from the sand and cemented itself in to the lower levels of these dunes forming a soft limestone. The upper levels of the sand dunes formed hard layers of calcrete. Over time vegetation grew on top of these upper levels of calcrete forming an acidic layer of soil and humus. The plant roots exploited the upper levels of calcrete forming cracks that they and quartz sand could work its way down in to, to form channels. When the vegetation above the calcrete upper levels of the sand dunes died, and the wind helped blow it and the sand in the cracked dune layers away, what remained were the various limestone layers of the sand dunes which we now call the pinnacles. The pinnacles continue to form and deteriorate.
There are other attractions to visit in Nambung National Park including Hangover Bay, Kangaroo Point and Lake Thetis and we hope to get to these next time we visit.
Milligan Island Campground - Green Head. Location: Pt Louise Road, Green Head (32km North of Jurien Bay)
We stopped at Milligan Island Campground for a night on our way North ($20 p/n, no power or water). The site has around 30 bays on the leeward side of the dunes.
When morning rolled around, the boys were able to explore and they enjoyed wandering around the dunes and collecting the various shells and other items that had washed up on the beach. There was a huge collection of unusual shells and other sea life that we haven’t seen at a lot of beaches.
The only downside of this campsite was the mosquitos present in the morning and from early afternoon. From here we pushed further north, in search of warmer weather.
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3 окт 2024
