24 August 2022 – Perth to Rottnest Island

Up at 6am for breakfast at the airport hotel then a taxi into the Barrack Street Jetty with a very chatty driver from Afghanistan. The Barrack Square is surrounded by nice architecturally designed buildings with a stunning looking modern bell tower in the middle of the square, a stunning modern interpretation of a ship. As we wait for the ferry to Rottnest Island we meet & chat with a friendly Perth family, originally from Canberra living in the suburb next to us & their daughter went to the same school as our son, a small world.

It takes around an hour for the ferry to motor down the beautiful Swan River to the mouth at Fremantle. There are some very expensive houses and boats all along the shoreline. We chat to our new found friends all the way across on the ferry & before we know it we tie up at the wharf in Thomson Bay at Rottnest Island. It is only a short walk to our resort motel and we check in early at around 11am, the bags get delivered by the ferry company to the resort. We set off to explore the island.

The island has a hop-on hop-off bus and we spend an hour on the bus as it takes us on a long loop around Rottnest Island, the scenery is stunning with lots of small bays, beaches & intervening limestone cliffs. Back at Thomson Bay we call into the Dome Cafe for lunch, salt & pepper squid & fish & chips, for a change – ah so nice to eat fresh sea food again. The Dome Cafe has two very interesting domes built into the ceiling & painted with a globe of the world inside each dome, most unusual & very nice. Back to our hotel for a short rest after lunch while waiting for our luggage to arrive.

Rottnest Island is known for its population of Quokkas, a small marsupial kangaroo, very cute, inquisitive & very used to people. All the cafes, shops & stores have anti quokka doors so that the small animals don’t go inside the buildings, but some sneek through if you are not quick to get in. We see lots of Quokka as we walk around the settlement exploring the historical buildings dating from the 1800s when the island was used as a prison for Aboriginal men, also for the production of salt, lighthouses & Pilot Boats to escort shipping into the port of Fremantle. We spend all afternoon wandering amongst the historic buildings plus the vast number of old holiday houses. It is winter currently and there are not that many people on the island, however, in summer we are told all the accommodation is booked out & the island is crowded with families & hundreds of small boats moored in the sheltered bays. We finish at the Bathurst Point Lighthouse and are rewarded with beautiful views over Pinky Beach and over the Indian ocean to the north, with the tented Eco-Village overlooking Pinky Beach where our new found friends we met at the ferry terminal are staying.

The Bathurst Point Lighthouse was built after the wreck of the ship “City of York” in 1899 on the reefs of Rottnest Island. The anchor recovered from this ship is on display in front of the Visitor Information Centre at the start of the wharf. A cairn below the lighthouse commemorates the first known landing from a European on Rottnest Island from a Dutch ship in 1658, they named the island Rottnest (meaning rat nest in Dutch) Island.

It is a long walk back to our motel & we get back around 5pm then prepare ourselves for dinner at the nearby Isola Restaurant overlooking Thomson Bay. The Isola is a nicely laid out Italian Restaurant with full length floor to ceiling windows, the views are amazing. The Isola is staffed mainly by Italians with Italian chefs & wait staff. The waitress who served us comes from a small city, Latina near Roma, the place where Tereza & family spent 9 months in a refugee camp before coming to Australia, what a small world. Next to us another couple sat & overhearing us talking to the waitress about Italy started to talk to us & comparing places they visited while in Italy. They ordered (without knowing) the same meals & even the same Italian red wine as we did. We had a lovely chat with them, as the lady’s family, who came from Lithuania, had similar experiences as Tereza with refugee camps overseas & in Australia. The food is delicious Italian fare & we finish the night with an Affogato & very full stomachs. The short walk back to our motel helps to make us feel a little more comfortable. Another great day.