NAMBUNG N.P.

Located south of Cervantes on the west coast. The park is best known for the Pinnacles Desert which is its centre piece.

There are about 150,000 individual pinnacles which when first sighted by the crew of a ship in the 1800s were believed to be the remains of an ancient city. (One source says that the formations appeared on Dutch maps from as early as 1658.)

The pinnacles are the fossilised remains of a forest that now jut from the sandy soil. There is some disagreement among scientists about exactly how the formations occurred, but a general consensus seems to be that minerals soaking down into the decaying root systems and holes left by large tree roots led to these spectacular outcrops.

The DEC Nature-base website gives the following information about the formation of the Pinnacles:

'The raw material for the limestone of the pinnacles came from sea shells in an earlier epoch rich in marine life. These shells were broken down into lime-rich sands which were brought ashore by waves and then carried inland by the wind to form high, mobile dunes. Three old systems of sand dunes run parallel to the WA coast, marking ancient shorelines.

The oldest of these, known as the Spearwood dune system, is characterised by yellow or brownish sands. In winter, rain, which is slightly acidic, dissolves small amounts of calcium carbonate as it percolates down through the sand. As the dune dries out during summer, this is precipitated as a cement around grains of sand in the lower levels of the dunes, binding them together and eventually producing a hard limestone rock, known as Tamala Limestone.

At the same time, vegetation that became established on the surface, aided this process. Plant roots stabilised the surface, and encouraged a more acidic layer of soil and humus (containing decayed plant and animal matter) to develop over the remaining quartz sand.

The acidic soil accelerated the leaching process, and a hard layer of calcrete formed over the softer limestone below. Cracks which formed in the calcrete layer were exploited by plant roots. When water seeped down along these channels, the softer limestone beneath was slowly leached away and the channels gradually filled with quartz sand. This subsurface erosion continued until only the most resilient columns remained. The Pinnacles, then, are the eroded remnants of the formerly thick bed of limestone.

As bush fires denuded the higher areas, south-westerly winds carried away the loose quartz sands and left these limestone pillars standing up to three and a half metres high.'
 

The Aboriginal name for the area 'Nambung' means winding or crooked and refers to the river running through the park.

Other attractions in the area include Kangaroo Point, Hangover Bay, Coloured Desert as well as the variety of plants and animals that live in the area.

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