Rottnest Island

Trip Start Jun 15, 2008
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Trip End Jun 15, 2009


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Flag of Australia  , Western Australia,
Friday, November 21, 2008

It has been far too long since I have last posted about our trip so I am going to run you through the last two months of our trip in a few short posts. In our time in Perth, which I can honestly say we both thoroughly enjoyed, we got to get out of the city on three occasions. On a previous post I told you about our trip to Margaret River, in this post I will be briefly telling you about our trip to Rottnest Island of the coast of Perth and In my next post you will be hearing about Our trip to wave rock.

Rottnest Island, located 19km off the coast of Perth is so called because the first people to discover the island saw what they thought were rats nesting all over the Island, hence they called it Rats nest Island which became Rottnest and is Known as "Rotto" to the locals. The animals the explorers had in fact seen were Quokkas. A small animal which looks like a cross between a rat and a wallaby SIgn on Rottnest Island
SIgn on Rottnest Island
 .

The beautiful thing about rotto is that there is no motorized vehicles on the Island(except for the Island bus and a couple of private tour buses) so the only way to get around the Island is to hire a bike and use good old man power. Apart from large Queues getting on the ferry to the island and at the bike hire place on the island everything went pretty smoothly for our trip.

We were nervous about getting on the bikes as it had been a couple of years since myself and Caroline had actually ridden but after a couple of minutes we were experts once again.

We chose the intermediate route around the Island which was about 10km long and didn't have too many hills. Stopping every couple of kilometers to have a swim or some lunch, the whole experience really was beautiful.

As we stopped at one lookout we noticed some of the infamous quokkas over by a bench. A mother and baby quokka. So obviously we went over to get a photo. The baby quokka looked, as all small animals do, quite cute so my obvious reaction was to pat it Caroline on her bike
Caroline on her bike
 . What I forgot was that these were wild animals and low and behold as my index finger approaches the little animals skull the little bastard bit me. HE BIT ME. Caroline falls around in stitches of laughter as I nurse my finger. OK the bite never actually broke the skin, but still thats not the point. Lesson learned - never try to pat a wild animal no matter how small and cute they are.

We also had some encounters with snakes and lizards(I nearly ran over a snake coming down the hill on my bike) on the Island and it was amazing to see them in their natural habitat.

We returned home on the ferry that evening tired, sun burnt but having enjoyed a great day.
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