Quokkas invite you to Rottnest Island

Rottnest Island has an interesting history: it was given this name by Dutch fleet captain Willem de Vlamingh when he found the island infested with "rats". Rottnest = Rat's Nest. As it turned out, the "rats" were not rats - they are marsupials that are genetically closer to kangaroos than rats, but the damage was done and the name has stuck to the island. These rats are called Quokkas; this island is called Rotto!

Rotto lies in the Indian Ocean, 19 km off the western coast of Australia. We took a ferry from Perth that sailed down the Swan River to Fremantle (which is at the mouth of the river, on the coast of Australia) and changed to a catamaran from there. The whole journey, therefore, took us almost 2.5 hours - longer than we'd have liked to spend just getting there. The island is not very big - it can be covered by bike within a couple of hours. Since it was almost lunchtime by the time we landed in Rotto, we headed straight to the island cafe and having had our fill, moved on to the island bike hire to get ourselves cycles, helmets and a map. It's all well set and organised and streamlined.

Then we began cycling around the island - and within a couple of minutes of leaving the inhabited parts of town, we came across a family of quokkas. Click click clickety click went our camera shutter - the quokkas couldn't care less: they probably see gawking tourists every few minutes. Our cycling route followed the coastline of the island for the most part, and the views of the Indian Ocean along the way were fantastic. We could even see Perth from here, even though it is a good 28 km away (as the crow flies). In the past, the waters around the island have seen several shipwrecks, and there was a display along our cycling route that pointed out the direction in the waters of some of the known wrecks.

Unfortunately, we didn't have the time to circumnavigate the whole of Rotto. On our way back to the Ferry Terminal, we took the inland route - that allowed us to cycle past the lighthouse on the island and also check out some inland freshwater lakes. Then, after returing the bikes and getting ourselves some fresh juice from the island deli, we took the boat back home.

Rotto ended up being a good excursion, but if we were to do it again, we'd like to make it an overnight trip for no other reason except the fact that the 5 hour journey takes too much out of a day to leave us enough time to check out the island.

That evening, we wanted to have dinner at the Annalakshmi restaurant which is so conveniently located on the Perth Ferry Terminal. But we were out of luck - there was a private function on and we were not invited :-(

We met with our friend Greg that evening, and he took us to trendy neighbourhood of Subiaco where we had a wonderful meal together at the Subiaco Hotel. Over a lovely meal (and even lovelier dessert that was served to us by the loveliest Rachel), we shared experiences, caught up on life, discussed Hong Kong and Sydney, smiled, laughed, argued-and-then-made-up-with-the-waitress, and had a great time!



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