Rottnest Island

The ferry.

The rugged coast of the west end.

Quokkas.

Small Salmon Bay.

Osprey.

Big Salmon Beach.

Ricey Beach.

Quokka looking for food.

Friendly little guys.

Wadjemup Lighthouse.

January 7-8th.

Early on Sunday morning Shannon dropped Lucy and I off at the Perth Docks. We caught the 8:30 ferry to Rottnest Island. This is a piece of land that used to be connected to the mainland, but with rising waters over the last thousands of years has become an island. The first Dutch explorer here found a large population of what he thought were rats, and named the island Ratnest in Dutch, which has become Rottnest. The rats are not rats, but rather quokkas, which are a small member of the marsupial family. This is an animal that I had never heard of before. They look like a cross between a rat and a kangaroo or wallaby and are about the size of a domestic cat and they are all over the island. They do well here because there are no real predators like foxes on the island. They have become quite tame and tolerate people taking selfies with them and this is one of the goals of most tourists.

The ferry ride was about two hours of which the first hour and a half was going down the Swan River to the sea. This surprised me as I thought that Perth was right on the coast. The river is very wide and long as it snakes to the coast. Apparently, it is also quite shallow. The ferry must control its speed going through the river because of other boat traffic. But once it reaches the ocean it turns it on and for a half hour we raced across the waves to the island.

After visiting the information centre and checking on our accommodation (we had booked a hostel for the night, which turned out to be an old army barracks), we decided to buy a hop on hop off bus ticket around Rottnest. The trip around the island takes about an hour at a maximum of 40km/hr and it gave us a good overview of what we wanted to visit. When we got back to the Settlement, which is the small village, we explored that and then walked to our barracks and got settled in the room. Then we got on the bus again and headed out to the west end, called the narrows where we took a couple of short walks to admire the rugged shoreline and to see a few seals that were sunning on the rocks off shore. Unfortunately, the last bus is at three and arrives back at four, so we had to take the bus the rest of the way around, or else walk about ten kilometres. We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the immediate area around the Settlement and some of the shops before having a seafood dinner at the restaurant at the harbour. We walked back to the accommodation at dusk and saw numerous quokkas feeding along the road and at the barracks courtyard.

On Monday the 8^th we walked back to the Settlement to return the key, had breakfast at the bakery and then used the bus to visit a few sites on the island. The bus travels in a clockwise rotation so we chose to visit Little Salmon Bay, Big Salmon Bay, the Lighthouse and then Kris Beach.

Little Salmon Bay, is as its name implies a small cove with a sand made of coral and shells fragments. There were lots of people there snorkelling on the reef just off shore. We had brought masks and snorkels but no flippers. We found the water quite fresh and since we were pressed for time, because of our return ferry time, we opted to take the bus to the next stop. Big Salmon Bay was a much less crowded area and a much larger sandy beach. At one end of the bay was a large osprey nest with two fledglings in it. We walked half way down the beach and had a swim. The water was very nice once you got in. Later we walked the rest of the beach to the eastern exit and continued along the road for a couple of kilometres and up a hill to the high point of the island to where the Wadjemip Lighthouse is located. We took a tour of it in order to see the view from the top. On the way back to the road we stopped to take selfie photos with a few quokkas. They loved the trail mix we fed them and happily posed with us. Then we caught the bus to Ricey Beach. We only had enough time to wander around the beach for a bit before we had to catch the last bus back to town.

We took the 4:00 ferry back to Perth. The open ocean was very rough and some people on the top deck, facing rear, got soaked. The water calmed as we got back to the Swan River and we cruised back to Perth.

Shannon and Kami were both working so we decided to have dinner at the waterfront before taking an Uber back to their house, where we arrived about ten.