14 September. Departure day! Today we leave Perth after a slow start with a stop at the supermarket to stock on food for the next days. David and I leave on a sunny morning headed north. We leave the city and soon hit the first Eucalyptus forests. Driving along Indian Ocean Drive, we pass Yanchep and later in the afternoon reach the beautiful Nilgen Natural Reserve, where we stop to look for bees. Although we only find honeybees, we had a first chance to see many cool plants in the wild, including spar orchids, Banksia, and Hakea, and many more!
The day is going by fast, and the next decision is whether to stop at the Pinnacles Desert. Although likelihood of finding native bees here is low, we agree that this is a stop worth taking and decide to do a whistle tour of this incredible place. We are not disappointed and soon become enchanted by this alien and magic landscape. Against a backdrop of yellow sand, thousands of stone pillars stand up in the long shadows of the late afternoon. The stone columns can vary in height from a few tens of centimeters to more than two meters. Their origin of these structures remains a mystery and hypotheses range from precipitation in subterranean rivers to the trunks of ancient trees buried in sand. Regardless of how they are born, David and I spend some time among their bizarre forms and search for shapes among the stones. Some remind us of wizards, skulls, animals and many more! In the sand, we come across the tracks of a kangaroo, and follow them for a while, tracing the, sometimes enormous jumps of what we assume was a large kangaroo. In the outskirts of the park, we briefly see an emu, rivalling in size and African ostrich.
It is getting late, and we push towards our first campsite at camp Karda. The night is starting to set but as we pull in the dirt road, I see my first live wild kangaroo. Soon we realise that many more are coming out as the sun sets, and see a mom and jockey that graze the vegetation not far from where we set camp. After a dinner in the cool and rainy night, the sky opens and we are treated to an amazing display of the milkyway high in the sky. We take some night photos of stars and planets and go to bed, exhausted but excited. Sadly no bees today, but maybe tomorrow we find them.