Rottnest Island WA, Quokka

Rottnest Island WA April 29, 2015
Today was Rottnest Island day. We booked a tour which picked us up from the park and took us to the  ferry that leaves from Fremantle. The ferry ride was pretty smooth, but the noise from the hordes of playgroup children and some that looked school age to us was deafening. You could not hear the PA or the commentary, if there was one. One 6yo who along with his mates had taken over the seats on the other side of our table and who had adopted us, seemed pretty aware of things nautical and marine. He knew the names of a bunch of sharks and whales and of the aircraft carrier anchored just off the coast (USS Carl Vincen) and was going on about the Edmond Fitzgerald wrecked on Lake Superior, which I though odd for an ozzie boy, but they turned out to be Canadian, which makes more sense.

  Rottnest Island ferry. Fremantle WA

USS Carl Vincen. Fremantle WA

Rotto, as it's called, is best explored by bicycle, of which there are thousands for hire, or foot.  The thing is, we came here once in BC (that's before children) and frankly, we were struggling to recognise anything at all that looked familiar. We headed for a cafe, only to find that at 11am they were out of most things and that the coffee was 20 minutes away, a fact disclosed after taking our cash. Oh, well, we can wait. We elected to take the bus ride and get the guided tour of the whole place before we made a decision of what to do. Excuse the photos, they were taken out of the bus window.

  Rottnest Island WA

  Rottnest Island WA

  Rottnest Island WA

King George skink.  Rottnest Island WA

The bus tour was good. Certainly the soft option to see everything and get all the chat about the place as you go. Well worth the $16 i reckon. The place has been developed from a quaint, special, almost secret place to just another beach suburb for the rich and idle to call home. There are now some 600+ moorings in the half-a-dozen coves and coupled with the 1000 or so units / cottages / cabins, all booked through the RI Authority. It's just everywhere you look. Can you imagine the island during summer with literally hoards of people living here plus boat load after boatload of day-trippers? It must be just plain horrible. This is Geordie Bay. look carefully at the water. Each one of the little dots is a mooring. Look at the foreshore. Those units come right the way around from end to end.

Geordie Bay.  Rottnest Island WA

Back at the Settlement, we found the old hotel that looked sort of familiar and ordered a bucket of prawns and some ciders before grabbing a comfy table and chairs out on the deck. We decamped to the safer looking interior table when a peacock started to make itself a damn nuisance, and would have followed us inside except Judy shut the door on it, much to the chagrin of the manager.

Having summoned up some strength, we walked up around the old part of the place, which is completely obscured by the addition of 10,000 similar looking cabins and shacks, all in the name of accommodation.

Accommodation. Rottnest Island WA 

Accommodation. Rottnest Island WA

But hey, we were here to see the Quokkas after all and we found quite a few. They seem to be quite comfortable around people and mostly the humans were behaving themselves and not feeding or touching them.

Quokka Rottnest Island WA

Quokka Rottnest Island WA

We had a bit of a look at a few other old bits and pieces before retiring to lounges at another coffee shop and waited for the boarding time. As we walked down to the boat it started to rain and so we jumped on board and considered ourselves to have had a quite enjoyable day.