November 8th, 2022
Veronica drove us to the pickup point for the Pinnacles Tour at about 8:30 AM. We were picked up by the Pinnacles tour 4x4 bus for our trip to the Pinnacles which is near Cervantes on the West coast of Australia. We drove about 2.5 hours to get to the Pinnacles Park. It was our last stop. We started our tour at the Caversham Wildlife Park in the Swan Valley to admire koalas and wombats and hand feed kangaroos. The kangaroos were so tame we could pet them and they ate out of our hands. We were permitted to pet the Koalas who are so very soft. We sat by the wombat and could pet them gently on the hind leg as they sat placidly in the park attendant’s lap.
We drove up toward Cervantes and passed the brilliant white sand dunes and beaches. We stopped in to the sand dune park near the town where our bus driver played running up and down the dunes with the big 4x4 bus. We all tried our hand at dune boarding. We did three runs each, first two were rather slow but when we waxed the boards with candle wax they went like the wind. No face plants for us, we stayed upright.
At Cervantes we had a behind-the-scenes factory tour on the processing of Western Australia rock lobster followed by a fish and chips lunch. This is a 600-million dollar industry owned by the Thompson family. They fish 200 lobster traps and pay $69,000 per lobster trap as a licence. Then on top of that they pay thousands in quota fees. They are only permitted to keep lobsters with no visible roe, or sperm patches. They have a specific allowable size and the large ones must be tossed back as well.
When they bring them to the plant they cool them down because when they are stressed the tend to lose legs, A lobster who loses too many legs cannot be sold. They let them sit in the cool water for three days to purge before they are sold.
We drove back to Perth down the Indian Ocean Drive, a full day 8:30 to 8:00. On the way we saw yards where they assemble the 150 meter road trains which carry four truck trailers. There are many mines in the region so a lot of heavy equipment is transported on the roads. We also saw many fields of Grass Trees.
It was just another awesome day in Australia.
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