Just two hours from Perth, the Turquoise Coast is close enough for a weekender, but its pleasures feel worlds away: pink-lit desert spires, lobster lunches, rock-lounging sea lions and water so azure it seems made up.

It’s an odd, albeit deeply human sensation – grasping at a word to describe how your body feels, and coming up short. As I stand in the Pinnacles Desert, the whole place glowing an improbable pink as the sun melts into the Indian Ocean, I rack my brain trying to find the right one. Bewildered? Flummoxed? Enthralled? None of them quite land. But perhaps that’s because I’ve never seen something so otherworldly.  

As far as the eye can see, the desert bristles with limestone spires, standing to attention like a stone army guarding the coastline. The sun casts luminous beams across the desert floor, so sharp and theatrical they look as if they’ve been fired from some cosmic lighting rig. In a place like this – where reality feels a little thin – I realise it is best not to think but to feel. 

Natural wonders at the Pinnacles, Nambung National Park 

The Pinnacles have a way of encouraging surrender. Nearby, a group of grey nomads have unfolded deckchairs in the sand, cracking beers and facing west to soak in the evening’s show, prompting a flurry of “oohs" and “aahs".  

Even the Scottish comedian Billy Connolly gave himself over to the place when he visited in the ’90s to film Billy Connolly’s World Tour of Australia, performing his world-famous nudie dance among the limestone spires. But the desert’s pull runs deeper than spectacle: on Yued Noongar Country, the Pinnacles hold deep cultural significance, including as a place connected to women’s stories and knowledge. 

Rising by the thousands from the yellow sands of Nambung National Park, the Pinnacles are among Western Australia’s great natural oddities: limestone forms shaped by rainwater, wind and shifting sand, and still capable of making grown adults lose their grip on the ordinary world.  

They sit near Cervantes on the Turquoise Coast, a strangely undersung stretch barely two hours north of Perth. It’s one many visitors leave too quickly, missing the low-key fishing towns, fresh-caught lobster, sea lions and national parks bright with wildflowers. 

Ancient stromatolites at Lake Thetis

Just outside Cervantes, the landscape turns quieter but no less strange. Lake Thetis is not theatrical in the manner of the Pinnacles; at first glance, it is a modest salt lake edged by scrub, its shallows dotted with dark, lumpy forms – known as stromatolites – that look, frankly, like very little at all.  

These unassuming lumps are living structures built by microscopic organisms, linked to some of the earliest evidence of life on Earth – and now found alive in only a few places on the planet. Suddenly, the lumps become kind of thrilling. 

Fresh seafood in  Cervantes

On the Turquoise Coast, natural wonders have a habit of turning up in unexpected forms: in salt lakes, in wild seas and, occasionally, on your plate. At Cervantes’ Lobster Shack, they begin in the water, where tour guide Corey Ellem hauls up timber lobster pots from the swell, dripping seawater and seaweed like strange wooden ribcages.  

Onboard, western rock lobsters are measured, checked and allocated by ‘lobster lotto’: names pulled from a hat, lunch assigned by chance. Back on shore, the winning crustaceans reappear with chips and salad, which is about as direct as paddock-to-plate gets, if the paddock happens to be the Indian Ocean. 

Wildlife encounters in Jurien Bay 

Further north, Jurien Bay Oceanic Experience takes me to Essex Rocks, where Australian sea lions loll around like they own the place. Which, of course, they do. Endangered, endemic to Australia and among the rarest sea lions in the world, they are one of the Turquoise Coast’s great privileges.  

The first we see is a huge male sunbaking in full lord-of-the-island mode, dark and heavy-bodied, with the golden crown that gives sea lions their name. Guide Katy Fannei says mature males often “cruise by like submarines, give us a side-eye and then leave again". On our snorkelling visit, they mostly stay ashore while we bob hopefully in the swell. Fair enough; even wildlife is entitled to a day off. 

Hiking trails in Lesueur National Park

About 25 kilometres north-east of Jurien Bay, Lesueur National Park offers a different kind of abundance. The landscape rises into low, muscular hills, all grass trees, banksias and sandy trails, which play host to kangaroos and emus moving through the bush.  

You can walk it, with trails leading to lookouts and the summit of Mount Lesueur, or take the 18.5-kilometre scenic drive through the park, letting the landscape roll past. In wildflower season from late July to October, the place erupts with orchids, hakeas, grevilleas and kangaroo paws. 

Arts and eats in Green Head 

After Lesueur, I drive back towards the coast and continue north to Green Head, a small fishing town about 20 minutes from Jurien Bay. Katy Fannei, from the sea lion tour, had told me Green Head Gallery Cafe was “like a trip to your grandmother’s house, in the best way" – and she was right. 

In an old coastal house, owner and artist Deborah Crookes serves barista coffee, homemade cakes, seasonal savoury dishes and sausage rolls with the kind of reputation only small towns can confer. There are paintings on the walls, fig jams from the old tree on the property and garden tables outside. 

Deborah has been in Green Head for 46 years, long enough to remember its crayfishing days and the years when “the big boys" made it harder for smaller operators to stay afloat.  

She opened the gallery in 2011 and the cafe seven years ago, and also helped push for the Three Bays Walkway, a coastal track linking South Bay, Dynamite Bay and Anchorage Bay so visitors could see more than a quick glimpse of the town’s extraordinary shoreline. 

Three Bays Walkway

Walking it later, I understand the impulse. The 2.8-kilometre track opens onto beach after beach of glassy green-blue water and pale sand, barely another person in sight. “You can see why they call it the Turquoise Coast, can’t you?" a local says as I pass, and for once the name does not oversell the view. The colour is absurd. The space feels endless. And there it is again, that same sensation from the Pinnacles – the mind reaching for a word, and the coast, quite sensibly, refusing to be reduced to one. 

Getting around the Turquoise Coast

The Turquoise Coast is best explored by car. Cervantes is about two hours north of Perth, with Jurien Bay located a further 20 minutes up the coast. Pinnacles Edge Resort is a convenient base in Cervantes, with self-contained studios and apartments, a pool and an onsite restaurant.  

Turquoise Coast travel tips

Time a visit to the Pinnacles Desert for sunset, when the limestone spires glow pink and gold. Jurien Bay Oceanic Experience runs sea lion snorkel tours in Jurien Bay Marine Park. The Three Bays Walkway traces the coast around Green Head, linking South Bay, Dynamite Bay and Anchorage Bay. 

Lobster Shack in Cervantes runs lobster-catching and factory tours, with fresh western rock lobster served on the shore. Or check out Green Head Gallery Cafe, part coffee shop, part gallery and part coastal hideaway that’s just a short stroll from the Three Bays Walkway.