World Australia Western Australia Rottnest Island

Heather and Gary's Travel Homepage Heather and Gary in Australia 2009

A day at Rottnest Island Feb 22, 2009

Sunday February 22 We spent Sunday with Chris and Don at Rottnest Island just18 kilometres off shore from Perth. Don drove to Fremantle where we parked at the ferry terminal, had a cup of coffee and waited for the 9:15 ferry. Don had ‘work connections’ with the captain (Steve) of the “Oceanic” catamaran and we were personally welcomed aboard. The crossing was expected to be quite sloppy (Steve’s description), but the 30 minute crossing proved to be fine. Rottnest Island is a playground for Perth with lots of sandy bays with beautiful white sand beaches all around the 11 kilometre long island. We took the Bayseeker bus tour (a jump-on/jump-off service) around the island to get our bearings and decide which beaches we wanted to visit. After having completed our trip around the island and grabbing an early lunch at the Dome restaurant, we re-boarded the bus to head for Little Salmon Bay to explore the ‘underwater trail’. This interpretive trail winds through the coral with ten stations, each consisting of a marker and a plaque which explains some aspect of the coral environment that one is looking at. Very interesting! Unfortunately, since this beach was on the windward side of the island, the water was rather rough. Although we all went in for a snorkel closer to shore, only Don and Gary went further out to explore the interpretive trail. It was then back on the bus to Little Parakeet Bay which today was on the leeward side of the island. Parakeet Bay was a very pleasant beach, sheltered from the heavy breeze, where we spent the rest of the afternoon, snorkelling, swimming and sunning. After spending a couple of hours at this beach, we walked to Geordie Bay for an ice cream and then on towards the ferry harbour at Thomson Bay. Along the way, we walked through the local golf course, which would be very hard to identify as a golf course were it not for the flag and the tee boxes. On the golf course, we finally spotted the small marsupials called quokkas, for which Rottnest Island is famous. Quokkas really look somewhat like giant rats. This apparently is how the island got its name (the Dutchmen who first came to the island thought that the island was inhabited by rats). We took a few photos of the very friendly and curious quokkas before heading into town to the Quokka Resort Hotel for a drink before catching the ferry back to Fremantle at six o’clock; the last ferry of the day. The trip back was as rough as the trip over but the 30 minutes passed quickly. Don went up to the bridge with Steve to learn a bit about the ferry, and after mooring at the dock, we had our photo taken with Steve before driving back the Chris and Don’s for a great home-made dinner accompanied by a bottle of white wine from Margaret River. Another great day in Oz!

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