Yesterday was an excellent day. As previously mentioned, we had an early start to drive into the City. In the City, we boarded our 27-seater 4×4 bus; a weird and wonderful vehicle and very, very comfortable, it has to be said. The bus drove us North of Perth, to the Pinnacles Desert, making a couple of stops along the way. These stops were largely to give us a break on the long journey, but were also there to give us a glimpse of Australian life outside the city. We saw a solitary koala, munching on some eucalyptus leaves, but nothing of real excitement…. until we reached some rather large sand dunes. This is where the 27-seater 4×4 came into its own. It mounted the sand dunes without too much effort and hurtled down the other side. Being in a bus going over the edge like that was pretty exciting and made me think of the Italian Job! Some of us took the opportunity to witness the bus going over the dunes from the outside, affording us the opportunity to record the occasion for our own posterity.

After the driver had finished throwing us around the sand dunes, he offered us some "sandboards", so that we may have a go at flinging ourselves down these sand dunes at speed. Alas, the sand was not as dry as we might have hoped, so the speed was ‘slow’.

Onward, then, to the main attraction, The Pinnacles! Having been sat on a coach for half the day, I was beginning to wonder if I might be disappointed by the phenomenon that us The Pinnacles. Would it all be worth it? As we made the final approach to the desert, I knew that it was worth it. Not one of the photos that I took in the hour that we spent in between these large natural structures could do justice to the magnificence that they portray or the vastness of the whole spectacular. The Pinnacles really do have to be seen to be believed. And seen close up – no amount of megapixels could demonstrate how awesome a sight the Pinnacles make up. Very much worth spending a day on a coach to see!

We kept our travelling down to a minimum today, choosing to visit a local winery at Sandalford to find out how they do things and to sample their wares. There are many worse ways to spend a sunny afternoon in Western Australia, I am sure of that! So, sample we did and we did not come away empty-handed. Neither did our hosts, so I guess we can call that another successful excursion.

This evening saw us visiting a drive-through bottle store to pick up a couple of ice cold beers to accompany our pizza and video evening. A drive-through bottle store! Something, I imagine we’ll not be seeing in the UK before we see The Pinnacles there!

Tomorrow we head off to Rottnest Island to meet some Quokkas. Stay tuned for more exciting adventures!