Laron, it's less than one hour north of Lancelin (before Jurien Bay) at a small spot called Cervantes (right on the coast). Approx 3 hours drive from the centre of Perth city. They are thousands of limestone pillars left standing in eerie formations after a natural process of erosion removed the sand from around them. It is part of the Nambung National Park, and makes you realise that Perth is situated in semi-arid, desert conditions, whereas this is an actual desert.
Description of how they were made: (from
http://www.theoldswanbarracks.com/Pinnacles-Desert-Nambung-National-Park-Western-Australia)
"...They are all shapes and sizes and there are many that resemble things in everyday life, for example The Turtle, the Cathedral, the Whale, Casper the Ghost and even a Sea Lion balancing a ball on its nose. The Pinnacles are made up of sea shell fossils from earlier times which were rich in marine life. These shells were broken down over the years into lime sands which were washed ashore by the sea and then blown inland to create high, mobile dunes...
The slightly acidic rain dissolves small amounts of calcium carbonate as it soaks down through the sand. As the dune dries out during summer, this creates cement around grains of sand in the lower down, binding them together and over time producing a hard limestone rock, known as Tamala Limestone. Around the same time, vegetation became established on the surface, aided this process. Plant roots stabilised the surface, and encouraged a more acidic layer of soil and humus (containing decayed plant and animal matter) to develop over the remaining quartz sand. The acidic soil accelerated the leaching process, and a hard layer of calcrete formed over the softer limestone below. Cracks which formed in the calcrete layer were exploited by plant roots. When water seeped down along these channels, the softer limestone beneath was slowly leached away and the channels gradually filled with quartz sand. This subsurface erosion continued until only the most resilient columns remained. The Pinnacles, then, are the eroded remnants of the formerly thick bed of limestone. As bush fires denuded the higher areas, south-westerly winds carried away the loose quartz sands and left these limestone pillars standing up to four metres high. Although the formation of the Pinnacles would have taken many thousands of years, they were probably only exposed in quite recent times. Aboriginal artefacts at least 6,000 years old have been found in the Pinnacles Desert despite no recent evidence of Aboriginal occupation. This tends to suggest that the Pinnacles were exposed about 6,000 years ago and then covered up by shifting sands, before being exposed again in the last few hundred years.
This process can be seen in action today - with the predominantly southerly winds uncovering pinnacles in the northern part of the Pinnacles Desert but covering those in the south. Over time, the limestone spires will no doubt be covered again by other sand drifts and the cycle repeated, creating weird and wonderful shapes over and over again. The animals in the park are mainly Nocturnal ( More active at night) but you can see Emus and Western Grey Kangaroos during the day. There are many Reptiles especially Bobtail skinks and Snakes .with over 90 species of birds recorded on the Swan Coastel plain so theres a good chance you will see some animals. Rhizoliths (fossil Roots) Individual roots of any plant modify the soil immediately surrounding themselves. The combination of water and humic acids can cause the precipitation of cement, especially calcite, between the soil particles surrounding the root. Erosion of the poorly cemented sediment between the more resistant fossil roots (or rhizoliths) can leave a 'lag' deposit of these fossil roots.
The surface of most of the Pinnacles are covered with hundreds of these short fossil root fragments.In detail, the individual rhizoliths commonly have a sub-millimeter diameter tubular hole down their centers where the actual root was located before rotting or decaying out of the fossil. The outer surface is very irregular being controlled by nearly random flucuations in the distance of chemical trasport and reaction surrounding an individual root. The sands which make up the Pinnacles Desert and the Tamala Limestone (which extends along much of the west coast of Australia) originated as beach sand brought ashore by the waves of the Indian Ocean. The sand grains are composed of both quartz (SiO2) (generally originating by weathering of continental rocks and delivered to the ocean by rivers) and calcite (CaCO3).
The calcite grains are, for the most part, broken up bits of shell material originating on the shallow continental shelf. There is evidence that the dunes formed along the coast reached heights of up to 300 meters!. Aboriginal Deamtime story For thousands of years the Yuart people from"the land of the crooked river" lived in peace and harmony in a land filled with flowers and food. As was their custom the women tended the small children of the tribe and when the morning was settled they would go out across the red dirt and dig for the roots of many of the climbing and running tuberous plants to add to the meal of the day for the community. The men of the Yuart would take the young boys with them when they went to hunt for the meat for the meals amongst the trees and shrubs of the bushland. The men would move with great ease and stealth as they carried their spears and taught the boys to track the footprints of the animals in the desert dust, echidna, brush wallabies, possums, emus, snakes and goannas and kangaroos, and to take care to kill only what was needed. "
