Adventures Meeting Princess Snapperhead by guest blogger Therese Glasgow:The Great Pinnacle Desert and Two Crazy-arsed Friends

In life we meet people who we just click with.  I cant remember what brought Dorit and I together in primary school, she was a tall exotic blonde, only child, who had travelled from foreign places, I on the other hand was short, tubby and youngest of six kids in your everyday Aussie family.

Dorit would quietly glide into a room and sit serenely contemplating the world, I on the other hand walked hard and heavy on my heals (still do) and talked non stop loudly (still do). 

Dorits family ate culinary delights such as chillies, salami, olives and even cavier, my family ate meatloaf, fried fish, sausages and lamb roast.

But hit it off we did in primary school. With the arrival o econdary education our lives headed in different directions.

Fast forward many, many years and we find each other again, I am living in Mandurah (south of Perth), Dorit is living in the Perth suburbs and children are appearing out of thin air ... Good god what happened to the two naked little girls sliding up and down the bathroom floor in Sorrento squealing with laughter.

Its amazing that even as adults with ruggins grasping at our ankles we could still cook up fun times, talk the nights away and enjoy a glass or two of bubbly, when you caught up with Dorit it was like you had seen her only yesterday, conversation and laughter flowed easily.

I always saw myself as the practical fix it girl and Dorit as the self confident, educated, arty girl ... Hhhmmm I wonder how Dorit saw us.




Therese crabbing with Venus, Melinda & John

Time for a holiday. What sort of mischief could two mums get up to with six kids under four years of age in tow and hardly a nickel to rub together between them.

My parents had a house right by the ocean, in front of a great beach and jetty in the sea side fishing village of Cervantes, both husbands busy, so we packed the kids in two cars, food, champagne, games, art materials, towels, bathers, nappies, nappies and more nappies and off we went. 

India, Venus, Melinda & twins on the Cervantes Jetty

Here are some of my memories of our week away.

- Dorit taught me how to draw, I drew a frog on a branch, I still have that picture.

- I taught Venus and India how to fish and catch crabs, but I don’t think they were all too excited about the stinky bait.
- Instead of building sand castles, we sculpted mermaid tails on the kids.
- We made a paper mache volcano with the kids, painted it and then "made it shoot lava into the sky" (bicarb, vinegar and food colouring) before we went back to Perth.
- And the piece de resistance ... our visit to the Pinnacles "Dorit style". 

Merman John Barton Cooney

The Pinnacles Desert, just south of Cervantes in the Nambung National Park, has the most amazing natural rock formations that rise out of the surrounding desert, visited by more than two hundred and fifty thousand tourists from all over the world each year, to some they are spiritual, to others a photographic wonder, to Dorit and I, well ... we headed out for a bit of a lark and a dare conceived over a bottle of champers the evening before.

The eight of us trundled out to the Pinnacles in the early afternoon, six kids, two giggly girls, two champagne flutes and a bottle of bubbly. 

The hardest part of our little arty task was to control six kids under four years of age, strip naked, run madly from van, pose with champers in front of said phallic symbol called Pinnacle all the while trying to look natural and sexy (I failed), take photo and not get caught by Japanese tourists and Park Rangers, we laughed till our sides split, I think in one of the final photos you can see a nappy bum disappearing into the distant desert.

Melinda [Minnie} Cooney doing a 'King of the World'  Titanic pose on a 'Minnie' pinnacle

 One of the fantastic things I love about Dorit is that we can cook up an amazingly silly “idea” and neither of us even consider not going ahead with it ... like the midnight picnic with the kids at Serpentine Cemetery ... but that story is for another day.

Torsten scuttling off into the wild blue yonder whilst mum does a Salvador Dali with Moet at the Pinnacles