by Andy
PUTTING aside all the travel we get to do, one of the best things about travel writing is the fact that it opens doors which would be firmly shut otherwise.
We have been lucky enough to experience some of Australia's best attractions with the benefit of advice from professors and experts, giving us the full appreciation of what we are seeing.
On our fifth day in Western Australia, we were due to visit a new boutique hotel called The Richardson.
The rooms were great and had everything from a 'pillow menu' to our own coffee machine and 'aerocchino' - a little silver pot which frothes your milk so you can make a real latte in your room.
But not only did we get to hang out at a hotel which would have been far beyond our meagre budget, but we were also given the inside track on the whole project by the owner himself.
He might have been a multi-millionaire, but we met him simply as Joe, and sat out for coffee with him on the hotel's outdoor dining area, called Palm Terrace because of the huge date palm which squatted in the middle of the courtyard.
Joe told us loads of interesting stuff, from famous guests who had visited (including Christina Aguilera, Pink and Chris Izaak, with Duran Duran on the way), to some of the problems in finding skilled staff.
He also revealed some of the strangest requests which uninformed tourists had made - such as the Japanese group who wanted to go to Margaret River for lunch. Margaret River is around 4 hours drive south of Perth.
We had our own stupid tourists story, having met a cabbie who had been asked if he could take a couple of Japanese tourists to Broome for the day - around 3 days drive away.
We were also invited to try out the hotel restaurant with a complimentary degustation dinner for two that night. Obviously we said yes, because it would have been rude not to.
A night at The Richardson was just one of the highlights of our trip to WA, and the next morning we set off to pick up our hire car.
It had started raining just as we stepped outside the hotel, but by the time we had got on the road it was torrential.
We were headed north to a place called Cervantes, a small town close to Nambung National Park and a geological anomaly called the Pinnacles.
Sure enough, about an hour or so out of Perth the rain dried up, and the highway became narrow and bumpy.
That afternoon we met another expert, Mike Newton, who runs a company specialising in sunset tours of the Pinnacles.
Other people (Joe for a start) had told us that the pinnacles were 'boring' - probably as you could drive round them in a few minutes via the self-drive track, and not realise much about them.
But having Mike with us ensured we got the most out of the experience; boring it was not.
He explained how they had been formed, how they were disappearing in places and emerging in others, and how Billy Connolly had once danced naked around them as part of a TV show.
Many tourists who had seen Connolly's antics obviously decided to copy and he had a number of stories where his tour groups had suddenly been entertained by a nude backpacker in the distance.
With his khaki outfit and wide-brimmed hat, Mike also looked a bit like a park ranger and said a few of the tourists had come apologising to him afterwards, expecting to be arrested or similar. He had tried to berate them, but then fell about laughing in front of them.
Much of our tour was about getting out and walking through the needle-shaped rocks, which were as tall as we were.
Halfway through one of these strolls, Mike suddenly flung himself to his knees and told us to stop exactly where we were.
He traced his fingers along a line of sand which had been pushed up, by what we thought were desert weeds.
He had found the tracks of a sand-groper; an ugly, bug-sized creature which burrows its way through the sand.
He ran his fingers into the ground where the tracks ran, trying to dig up the creature, but it had gone.
He stood up and brushed himself down, before pulling a small photograph album out of his pocket and flipping it open at a page where there was a picture of the orange-coloured creature.
Mike's photo album also contained some of the many sunset photos which he had taken over the years, and which his tour was really all about.
As the sun began to slip towards the horizon and the sky changed in colour, the sand-coloured rocks took on different colours and textures, becoming softer in the light.
Mike then took us to the lookout and told us to turn and take photos with the sunset to our backs; catching the eerie shadows which the pinnacles were casting.
Then we headed to one last place as the sun dropped far enough so that we could take photos directly at it.
The high cloud was turned a shade of make-up pink while other parts were a sheer orange.
We were dropped back at our hostel in the dark, and after a few handshakes and thanks from both parties, Mike was gone.
Then it was dinner time again; this time fish and chips at the pub!
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