The Pinnacles, Nambung National Park

Cervantes (including The Pinnacles)
Quiet fishing village near the remarkable Pinnacles
Located 245 km north of Perth, Cervantes is a pleasant, rather underdeveloped, fishing village and holiday destination with three jetties, a very good motel, a caravan park and a rock lobster processing plant.

Like Jurien, which lies to the north, it has that temporary and transient feel of a place which hasn't quite settled itself in. While it has more permanent and gracious holiday homes than Jurien there are still many houses built of fibro and permalum to cater for enthusiastic fishermen. The town's fishing fleet nearly doubles in the rock lobster season. Like all of the coast on the Central West the town is surrounded by spectacular displays of wildflowers in the spring. The Nambung National Park is particularly impressive.

Cervantes is one of Western Australia's newest towns. It was as recently as 1962 that the government removed 505 hectares from the northwest corner of the Nambung National Park to establish a town.

Cervantes takes its name from an American whaling ship which was wrecked off the coast in 1844. Apparently the Cervantes was anchored off Thirsty Point, the promontory which lies to the west of the town and separates Nambung Bay (to the south) from Ronsard Bay in the north, when a gale blew up and the ship was blown ashore on an island to the south of the point. The ship was not badly damaged but due to difficulty of repairs all the contents were sold on the site. The island was named Cervantes and, in 1963, it was given to the small township which had sprung up on the mainland.

The boats at the jetty at Cervantes

Things to see:  

The Pinnacles
There is little doubt that The Pinnacles rate with the dolphins at Shark Bay and the cliffs at Kalbarri as the premier attractions on the coast between Perth and Carnarvon. These strange, much photographed, limestone pillars look like no other landscape in Australia. There is a quality of moonscape or some science fiction movie about the whole area.

The Pinnacles were first discovered by Major Logue and his stockmen in 1849. They camped near the Nambung River and during the night the cattle strayed. While searching for them the next morning the stockmen came across the Pinnacle Desert.

Today the visitor has a much easier approach. After driving for about 27 km through typical coastal scrubland (huge white sand dunes separate the road from the coast - this is a rare opportunity to inspect the dunes and visit the incredibly white beaches - there are turnoffs to Kangaroo Point and Hangover Bay on the way out to the Pinnacle Desert) the visitor suddenly arrives at a desert which has literally thousands of limestone pillars (they look a bit like termite mounds) ranging from ones which are only a few centimetres high to ones which rise to four or five metres. The Pinnacles area is carefully controlled and while visitors can walk around and inspect the huge variety of pillars there is only a one way road system through the area.

The Pinnacles, Nambung National Park

So how did these strange pinnacles form? The coast of Western Australia, from Shark Bay nearly to Albany, has a near continuous belt of tamala limestone probably more accurately called aerolian calcarenite - ie. wind blown calcium carbonate - which has been produced by the combination of wind, rain and the cementing agent of calcium.

A set of unique circumstances produced the pinnacles. Firstly the huge sand dunes stabilised. The rains which fell on the dunes leached down through the sand carrying the calcium. This resulted in the lower levels of the dune solidifying into a soft limestone. As this stabilisation occurred a layer of soil formed on top of the dune which allowed plants to grow and further cemented the limestone below. Gradually the lowest layer of soil, which lay between the surface and the limestone, formed into a hard cap which resulted in the old dunes having three levels - a soil and plant level near the surface, a hard cap below the surface, and a thick layer of soft limestone at the bottom of the dune.

Inevitably the roots from the plants on the top level found cracks and broke up the hard cap and the layer of soft limestone. The result was that under a surface covered with plants and soil the pinnacles developed. No one knows for sure how long ago this process occurred. It may have started as long ago as 500 000 years but equally it may only be a few thousand years old and it may still be continuing today. The Western Australian Museum has opted for some time in the last 80 000 years.

Anyway the advent of drier weather in the region resulted in the top layer of plants and soil being removed and gradually the pinnacles were exposed so that today they stand like strange sentinels on a plain of wind blown sand.

Reading about Cervantes and The Pinnacles
There are two excellent books on Cervantes and The Pinnacles. Pinnacles by Ken McNamara is a Western Australian Museum publication with some excellent photographs and detailed explanations of how 'The Pinnacles' formed - which was used as the basis for the explanation of their origin offered here. Nambung Here We Come by A. Passfield is a more personal and anecdotal account from the man who became the Nambung National Park Ranger in 1966.

	Tourist Information
	Cervantes Tourist Information Centre Cadiz Street Shopping Centre Cervantes WA 6511 Telephone: (08) 6952 7700, 1800 610 660 Facsimile: (08) 6952 7711 Email: pinnaclesvc@bigpond.com
	Motels
	Cervantes Pinnacles Motel 227 Aragon St Cervantes WA 6511 Telephone: (08) 9652 7145 Facsimile: (08) 6952 7214 Rating: ***
	Holiday Homes & Units
	Cervantes Beachfront Holiday Units 5 Douro Close Cervantes WA 6511 Telephone: (08) 9652 7700
	Cervantes Holiday Homes Valencia Rd Cervantes WA 6511 Telephone: (08) 9652 7115 Rating: **
	Caravan Parks
	Pinnacles Caravan Park Aragon St Cervantes WA 6511 Telephone: (08) 9652 7060 Rating: ***
	Restaurants
	Cervantes Pinnacles Motel Restaurant 227 Aragon St Cervantes WA 6511 Telephone: (08) 96 527145
	Cervantes Ronsard Bay Tavern 219 Candiz St Cervantes WA 6511 Telephone: (08) 96 527009 Facsimile: (08) 96 527009