Nambung National Park
Encyclopedia
Nambung National Park is a national park in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

 (Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

), 162 km northwest of Perth
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....

. It contains the Pinnacles Desert
The Pinnacles Desert
The Pinnacles are limestone formations contained within Nambung National Park, near the town of Cervantes, Western Australia.-Formation:The raw material for the limestone of the Pinnacles came from seashells in an earlier epoch rich in marine life...

.

Nambung is an Indigenous Australian word meaning crooked or winding referring to the Nambung River that drains into the area.

The park is bordered to the north by Southern Beekeepers Nature Reserve and to the south by Wanagarren Nature Reserve. A large area of vacant Crown Land
Crown land
In Commonwealth realms, Crown land is an area belonging to the monarch , the equivalent of an entailed estate that passed with the monarchy and could not be alienated from it....

 is found along much of the eastern edge.

Europeans first visited the area in 1658 when Dutch maps recorded North and South Hummocks on their maps. Philip Parker King
Philip Parker King
Admiral Phillip Parker King, FRS, RN was an early explorer of the Australian coast.-Early life and education:...

 also mentioned the Hummocks in his journals in 1820. The Pinnacles Desert area remained relatively unknown until surveyed in the late 1960s after the area had been added to an existing national park that was formed in 1956.

Visitors can access the "Pinnacles" from Cervantes, 17 km north of the park, via Cervantes Road and Indian Ocean Drive
Indian Ocean Drive
Indian Ocean Drive is a coastal road in Western Australia which links Lancelin with the Brand Highway, just south of Dongara.On 26 September 2010 the final section of 65 km of sealed road from north of Lancelin to the old Pinnacles Desert Drive, approximately 10 km south of Cervantes, was...

. With the opening of the final (south) section of Indian Ocean Drive from Lancelin to Cervantes on 19 September 2010, visitors travelling from Perth can now access the "Pinnacles" Nambung National Park directly via Indian Ocean Drive.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK