The Pinnacles Desert

On Saturday Nige and Bob went off-roading up to the Pinnacles Desert. The Pinnacles Desert is 245 km north of Perth and is basically a desert of sand and huge, bizarre limestone formations that project out of the ground). Some formations are several feet tall, others the size of a finger. The current theory is that the Pinnacles are slightly harder columns of limestone that formed around tree roots that penetrated deep into limestone formed within ancient sand dunes. Water is always active in limestone and calcite is thought to have been preferentially deposited near these roots. When the softer limestone was eroded away, the columns remained. (There is an older theory that the Pinnacles are the result of calcification of tree stumps from an ancient forest, once covered in sand and now exposed by shifting dunes.) Who knows?

Anyway, I let Nige write about the trip but here are some photos in the meantime (oh, they also managed to go quadbiking whilst they were there ...