Day 115 16/07/2011 Perth – Rottnest Island

Day 115 16/07/2011 Perth – Rottnest Island

It was with great excitement that we got up this morning, because we had booked to go to Rottnest Island. We packed lunch and headed to Fremantle jetty. 



A cute Quokka



The ferry ride across was OK, I only got sea sick a little and the ferry didn’t rock too much. Once we docked we got the kids bikes and headed to the information centre so that we could plan our day.  We had decided that we would bring the kids bikes across with us on the ferry rather than hiring them and that Pete and I would just walk around….ha ha ha, as we set out to meet the 12pm tour at Oliver Hill I realised that I had forgotten to tell Pete that Rottnest Island is really hilly!! Oh well the exercise would be good for us. 

We really enjoyed the Oliver Hill and Tunnel Tour, it gave us a chance to explore on of the restored World War II 9.2-inch guns and maze of underground tunnels.  We learnt why the gun was installed on Rottnest and how they were operated.  We also learnt that whilst the gun was built to shoot at enemy ships that attempted to enter Fremantle Harbour the gun was never actually fired, lots of money spent but never needed.



a sleeping Quokka!!



At the end of the tour we walked the 4kms back to the Salt Store to book into the Quokka tour.  Quokka’s are Rottnest Island’s famous marsupial, the tour (walk) took us through the Quokka’s natural habitats and the kids really enjoyed getting up close and personnel with the Quokka’s.  It was really easy to see why the first European explores to the island thought the Quokka’s were “large cat like rats” and named the island ‘Ratnest Island’ over the years it was changed to Rottnest.  I was surprised at how friendly the Quokka’s were, they allowed us to get very close to them and did not appear to be terribly afraid of humans, I’m sure if we tried to touch them they would have run away, but we didn’t and so we got to see these little animals in their native habitat. 



Bathurst Lighthouse - Rottnest Island



After the Quokka tour we had about an hour to spare before the ferry left so we went for a stroll through the accommodation section and around to Bathurst Lighthouse.  Bathurst Lighthouse was the second lighthouse to be built on Rottnest, and was built after a number of ships wrecked along the coast, thus it was concluded that one lighthouse was not enough to guide ships through this treacherous piece of coastline.

As we walked around the island we learnt a lot about its history and past roles, including being a prison for “natural” Aboriginal people, a boy’s reform school and a salt mine.  The island certainly had a diverse, and at times very sad role in Australian history. We caught the ferry back, tired but having had a great day.

The bonus was returning to Marie’s where dinner was waiting for us!!