This is where we caught the ferry, departing just around sunrise.
And this next photo is of me and Jonathan, on the ferry, heading to the island.
We made it!
A lot of people were renting bikes for the day. The guidebook said to schedule around five hours to bike the entire island. We had an old lady and a strained back, so we bought the hop-on-hop-off bus pass instead, and hopped on the first bus of the day. And rode it once all the way around, one hour round trip.
Now where to hop off? Jonathan voted to hop off at the shipwreck.
That lump in the ocean behind Jonathan is a barge that drifted away from its moorings in Fremantle in the 1930s. You can now snorkel around it.
It was about 20 degrees Celsius outside. And the water was also around 20 degrees. It was a little chilly, but not as cold as other places I've gone swimming recently (ahem... South of France). But I had no swimsuit. I took off my shoes, but I was feeling regret. Regret! No swimming for me this time.
This is what Jonathan looked like from the beach. Um... maybe stand back a little bit, Jonathan?
I dusted off my wet sandy feet in time to catch the next hop-on bus on its half-hourly tour of the island. We rode a few stops and hopped off this time at the lighthouse.
(That was a photo of a lighthouse.)
From the lighthouse, Tim talked us into walking through the centre of the island to the road on the opposite side, since we didn't get to see the island's centre from the bus.
In case you can't make it there yourself, the centre of Rottnest Island looks something like this:
And people walking around in the centre of the island look like this:
So Rottnest is really famous for all the quokkas that live there. A quokka is a small marsupial about the size of a cat. We had seen pictures of smiling quokkas all over Rottnest. As soon as the ferry landed, we asked the lady at the information desk where we could go to see a quokka.
She said, "There are thousands of quokkas everywhere on Rottnest. You will see a quokka."
But it was nearly noon and we hadn't seen one. As we were walking along, scoping out the interior of the island for Tim's sake, I mentioned that it would be very convenient if a few quokkas would hop out on the path for us to say hello.
They were not on the path, but Tim spotted one under a picnic table near the path.
Is that a quokka?
Yes! It is a quokka!
Look, it's coming closer! Sit down and maybe it will say hello.
Hello!
And hello!
And hello again.
I think the tourists may have fed this guy before. He was sniffing the bags especially carefully.
Ok. Quokkas are cute. But maybe let's not sit here taking quokka pictures all day. Goodbye, quokka friend.
Back on track on our walk through the island centre, we reached the salt lakes. Does it look better with Tim?
Or without?
Waiting to catch the bus again.... Getting hungry.
After lunch, what do you think we did? That's right! We hopped back on the hop-on bus! This time we rode it to the far western side of the island, to view the seals.
There are seals down there. Do you see them?
Grandma also saw whales way way off in the distance. But I didn't.
We hopped back on the hop-on bus one more time, and headed back to the main town to check out the tourist shops before our ferry was due. One of the first things I noticed was the special half door at the grocery store keeping out the quokkas.
And that's when we realised where the quokkas really hung out. There were dozens of them around the restaurants and shops of the main town. One with this lady here:
Two with this guy here:
Several sniffing under the tables and benches.
And at least a half dozen competing with the sea gulls for abandoned chips. Like huge rats. Only with a pouch (because they are marsupials)!
Conclusion: quokkas are cuter in the bush than in the town.
We got back on the ferry for the last sailing to Fremantle, in the late afternoon...
... and landed just around sunset.
And that was Monday.
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