The Pinnacles, Western Australia
The strange, space-like rocks of the Nambung National Park
The Pinnacles in Western Australia's Nambung National Park look like they've come from another planet. Thousands of these strange rock formations stick out of the ground.
Despite what X-Files geeks may want you to believe, the chances of any of us having an alien encounter in our lifetime are pretty remote. Yes, we may take too many special mushrooms, then believe we're seeing UFOs, but quite frankly, ET has already phoned home, and he ain't coming back to play with us.
You can bet that if aliens did come down to play, though, they'd take one look at the Nambung National Park, and decided that it looks very much like home. The Nambung, which is a couple of hours north of Perth, is home to the Pinnacles, a massive group of pointy-outy limestone structures.
Now if there is one thing that Australia has got more than enough of, it's weird rocks. Most backpackers will tend to go back home after a year with reels and reels of pictures of the buggers. At the time they seem incredibly unique and fantastic, but after your family has had the 237th set of bizarre rock formations foisted upon them, you can bet your life that there will be more yawns than at the International Insomniacs Convention. The Pinnacles are slightly different though, and they are utterly absorbing.
The landscape helps. Even though the area is surprisingly close to the sea, this is real desert. It's scorched yellow/orange (depending on whether you've got your sunnies on) sand as far as the eye can see. It gives the out in the middle of nowhere feel, and that makes the rocks seem even more spooky. The other thing that helps is that there are millions of them, ranging from tiny stumps to giant Twiglets. You could walk through them for hours, up and down hills, through brief outcrops of vegetation - it's a truly extensive area. It seems like the world's biggest graveyard, run by the world's slackest headstone maker.
Walking through, some of the outcrops begin to take on certain shapes. There's a tortoise, a church, and even the freaky rabbit from Donnie Darko. Then there's the one that our guide euphemistically calls "Honeymoon Rock". It is, of course, shaped like the sort of thing bored housewives would buy in an 'adult' shop. Excellent attention to detail, mind.
The science behind why they're there is rather boring, unless you're really into your geology, but it's due to breaches in a limestone rock shelf, and pressure from layers of sand over millions of years - stop yawning at the back there... Apparently, there are Pinnacles present all the way down to Perth, but this is the only substantial patch that has been uncovered. No-one knows why that top layer of sand has disappeared, creating the visible spectacle, though. Maybe it's those pesky aliens after all?
