PERTH TO PINNACLES DESERT TO KALBARRI

Day one of my trip from Perth to Exmouth.

I managed to get up at 5 am, and since it was a Saturday there were no buses into town, so I had to walk to Freo station. Normally this is not a problem and takes 20 min but I had a huge bag to carry and forgot to give myself extra time... JUST made the train but didn't buy a ticket. I got caught at the other end, at the station in Perth, but the guy was nice enough to let me buy a ticket in the machines as he watched me struggle with my bag while it was clear that brain function was still not 100%.

But I made it in time for the bus, which is what matters.

Fell asleep almost immediately on the bus. We stopped at a roadhouse about 2 hours into the drive - there was a huge mural showing distances to various places, we were 1182 kilometres from Exmouth. Oh dear.

The next stop was the Pinnacles Desert. A weird gap in the vegetation where there are these rocky outcrops that came about because of some kind of geological process that I did not quite understand. They look quite big in the pictures right? Well they are not really, most of them are waist high and rather underwhelming in the end. We had a wander around but got used to looking at rocks quite quickly.

We ploughed through Jurien Bay, which is a town featuring a shopping centre and not much else. Then through Geraldton which apparently had the highest percentage of millionaires in Australia, and then back on to the rocky road. You are quickly in the middle of nowhere out here.

We stopped at a wildlife sanctuary that afternoon and got to FEED BABY KANGAROOS! Everyone (our bus was mostly girls) bypassed the birds and snakes etc. in a dusty rush to the kangaroo enclosure, went inside and got to pet them and feed them and make cooing noises.

This became old very quickly, so I went to the emu fence instead. I didn't want to try feeding it because I have become quite attached to my hand, and it had evil beady little eyes. I made a first lap around the sanctuary and saw cockatoos, snakes, lizards, dingoes, geese, and a rather unimpressive crocodile. I almost threw a pellet at its head to rouse it from its slumber but noticed the DO NOT THROW ANYTHING AT CROCODILE sign and thought better of it.

I made a second lap and this time fed the emu! They look like ostriches except meaner, 6 feet tall with red eyes. But it was accurate and didn't bite off any fingers. The crocodile still hadn't moved (plastic??!).

That night we slept in a little seaside town called Kalbarri and had a huuuge seafood barbecue for dinner, with a beer of course. I think we should have been forklifted home.