Sunday 6th January 2008

We had to set our alarm nice and early this morning because, when we were out and about yesterday, we booked to go on a trip to the Pinnacles, which is North of Perth. We woke up at about 6.15am, and the bus came to pick us up at just after 7am. Once the bus had collected the other people who were going on the trip, we were picked up by another bus - this time a huge 4-wheel drive one.

Our first stop of the day was in a place called Yanchep National Park, where we got to see wild koalas, kangaroos and other Australian wildlife. Afterwards, we jumped back on the 'truck' for some more driving. At about 11.30am we stopped for an early lunch and then it was off into the dessert. As we were driving along the dusty roads we made a couple of stops to look at lizards and things.

This afternoon we eventually made it to the Pinnacles Dessert, which is in Nambung National Park. The Pinnacles are crazy! They are limestone pillars that rise out of the of the sand dunes. Some are nearly 4 meters tall... and there are about 120,000 of them! Jim, our driver, dropped us off at one side of a huge field of them and we got to walk through them before meeting him on the other side.

When we left the Pinnacles, we drove to a place called Lancelin, where we got to leave the sealed roads and drove onto the bumpy tracks and then onto the sand dunes - now the 'truck' could really go to work. Driving up and down the dunes was awesome! All the girls (and some of the men) on the coach were screaming as we went over the top of the really big ones, which must have been about 20 meters high and really steep! After tearing around on the sand, Jim pulled over and we all got to go sand surfing. It was great fun... coming down - but climbing back to the top for another go was exhausting. I had four goes at it - two sitting and two standing... I was USELESS at the standing, and was lucky I didn't hurt myself - I took a pretty spectacular tumble. Although, it was no surprise - I even fell off sitting down. Nikki was much better than me.

After everyone was too tired to sand surf anymore, we jumped back on the 'truck' and headed back to Perth. When we got back, after so much driving, we had showers and then just crashed out in our room to relax.

Everybody's goin' surfing, sand surfing WA!