Travelog post for: Knopf

Next stop: Western Australia!
Driving north from Perth I came through an area with lots of these grass trees and not much else. Grass treees grow very slowly, only about 2cm a year, which is why bigger ones are really expensive if you want one in your garden. They grow back very well after fires and are important to Aboriginals because the big flowering spike on top produces nectar and can be used to make spears plus the tree produces resin, natural super glue.



Next stop in Nambung National Park: These lime stone formations are called the pinnacles. They might have been created by roots of plants the grew in the dune and left behind fossilized harder areas in the softer groound that eventually eroded, leaving the lime stone pinnacles, but the full theories are very complex and there's more than one possible explanation.


Here you can see the different colors of sand: the white one (due to lime) along the Indian Ocean and the yellow one (due to silica) around the pinnacles:


An Australian Christmastree: