Friday 2nd November 2001, Cervantes Oz.

Today we drove north up the coastal road to Cervantes to see the extraordinary Pinnacles. We arrived at the campsite a little after 1pm and set about doing the laundry. The idea was to get that and lunch out of the way, and then head down to the temptingly white sands and turquoise sea for a swim. The best time to see the Pinnacles, we were reliably informed, was either at sunset (or sunrise) or during a full moon.

As luck would have it, by the time we had eaten, and delved around in our luggage for our snorkelling gear, the wind had got up and the air felt distinctly cool. It quickly clouded over (depriving us of our scenic sunset), so we decided to drive directly to the Pinnacles.

Much of the road is unsealed and rather corrugated. Once again, the pots and pans rattled away like the percussion section of a school band. Suddenly Brigid spotted a pair of dark ears sticking out of the bush. We skidded to a halt and grabbed the telephoto lens. There, eyeing us suspiciously from the dense undergrowth, was a little grey kangaroo!

The Pinnacles themselves really are rather wonderful – even without the sunset – acres of strange tooth-shaped pinnacles of limestone, a sort of enormous higgledy-piggledy Stonehenge. It is hard to believe they are a completely natural formation. Indeed, early Dutch settlers thought they must be the remains of an ancient city. (Sadly, it looks as if some of the residents of nearby Cervantes have removed a few of the smaller stones to decorate their gardens.)

The trip back to camp required several ‘Kodak’ stops for roos. John was becoming increasingly frustrated that the zoom on his little digital camera was not powerful enough to get a really good picture, “… short of a roo actually posing at the side of the road”.

As if on cue, around the very next corner, two roos grazed contentedly at the edge of the road. To John’s amazement, Brigid was able to walk right up to within 20 feet or so with the camera.

Brigid had prepared a special ‘low fat’ Bolognese sauce. So we had spaghetti for dinner, washed down with a rather nice young shiraz wine: “The first in the Millennium” from Chateau Hornby in Alice Springs.