go west handbook – the blog

Day 2 – 25/07/09

Lancelin to The Pinnacles (Cervantes)

Sunset at the Pinnacles

Young Goss and Nigel were up at the crack of dawn, pure eager to fill the bellies and pack up the wreckage that is our campsite. There were bottles, cans, food and parts of the tent everywhere from the hurricane Charlie winds last night. We all had the porridge and coffee except for Gino who wouldn’t even stir from the car to brush his teeth, useless!

The buckos in the Tercel, Fester Adams and Coco (from coco pops), put air in the tyres and low and behold it seems to have sorted the car out. Thank Christ because we thought it was on its last legs after only 150km!!

So off we go on the road to Cervantes. Steve as usual won’t let anyone else drive, the wannabe boy racer he is. Darren and Eugene aren’t complaining though as they catch up on even more quality rest!

So we arrive at the National Park and see that the entry is per car ($10), not per person, so the minister for finance steps up to the plate and makes an executive decision to empty 1 car and all squeeze us all into the other. This will definitely be the tactic heading north. That’s why we elected him into the role in January 2009!! Nigel spots a decent area just off the main road to set up camp and BOOM, job done!!

Off we head for the Pinnacles about 4.30 just in time to catch the sunset. The place looks unreal, like it doesn’t belong on this planet, more like Mars or something. It reminded us of our rock picking days in New Norcia where we worked for 12 dollars an hour lifting boulders.

We do the usual tourist thing by driving around the 4km track but then we decide to do our Billy Connolly tribute. So we find a decent spot and all strip off bollock naked except for the woolly hats. We run and dance like mad men from the film ‘One who flew over the cuckoos nest’ for about 15 minutes. The cold breeze adds to our embarrassment! Photos are taken and videos made which are either gonna make us famous or haunt us later in life! We are thinking the latter!

Back to the campsite to wind down with the fire, guitar, cold Carlton dry, Nigel’s spaghetti and diced tomatoes! We shared our campsite with a German couple, great minds think alike!

Quote of the Day…..compliments of Darren

“The average age of the miners in Bolivia is about 40 because they breathe in so much asparagus”……. I think that’s asbestos Darren!

Distance travelled: 220 Km (Total 385Km)

Sandboarding at Lancelin

Day 1

Perth to Lancelin.

The trip began like a bag of liquorice allsorts. There was a touch of sadness leaving Perth but also a serious buzz about packing up the Mitsubishi Magna and the 1984 Toyota Turcell and getting ready to take on the long awaited beast of the West Coast.

The feeling of excitement soon turned to one of fear for the 2 baby wipe sharing fairies from Dundalk when the 25 year old Turcell soon started showing signs of its age.

Luckily the Turcell made it to our first stop, Lancelin. We rented out 3 sand boards at $10 each for 2 hours instead of the full day as the couple of hours was plenty of time. Great banter sand boarding down the sand dunes, but we felt a bit bad for Finto though as he struggled with his balance as his freakishly large forehead far outweighed the rest of his body weight causing him to tumble over to his left hand side on a consistent basis.
After a couple of good hours sand boarding it was time to find a spot for our first nights camping. We didn’t have to move to far as we set up amongst the sand dunes right next to the beach. Not too long later the tent was up and camp fire on. Darren had the potato massaman on the stove to fill the gaps in the bellies.

The chairs were pulled out and the bottles of Carlton twisted open. At roughly mid-night we put the fire out and made our way to the tent. Just as we were coming to terms with the cold it was time to get used to the rain as the tent collapsed letting all the rain in. Nightmare! Living the dream my arse, we might as well have been in the Aran Islands back home. So into the cars we ran and slept there for the night. All that aside, the first day was quality. Next stop, the Pinnacles in Cervantes.

Stay Tuned!

Distance Travelled: 165KM.

Nigel, Steve, Darren, Fintan and Eugene

There is five of us Irish lads traveling together and we decided to attack the giant west coast of Australia in a 1996 Mitsubishi Magna and a 1984 Toyota Tercel which we splashed out a whole $400 for. Probably the Tercel was not the wisest option because by the time we had got 45km out the road it started to struggle big time.

In terms of our itinerary its pretty rough. To be honest we have been following the guide given in the ‘Go West’ magazine and the Lonely Planet.