Perth 2 – Rottnest Island

Friday, May 27

With one day left in Perth and a good weather forecast, we had just enough sunshine time to make a trip to Rottnest Island to see the quokkas. The Dutch were the first Europeans to happen upon the island back in 1696. When they saw all the quokkas they mistook the cute little guys for rats and called the island “rat nest” island, hence Rottnest. Then in 2018 the famous tennis player Roger Federer took a selfie with a quokka and set off a trend. Now there are tons of blog articles on how best to take a quokka selfie. We definitely wanted to see the cuties, and scope out whether we could snap a pic without disturbing them too much.

We got the 9:30am express ferry out to the island. The whole round trip ferry ticket wasn’t cheap, about $60 each, but then every day activity in Australia seems to cost an average of $100.

Upon disembarking on the island we went to find the bathroom. Right away we saw a quokka who had just hopped into some shade to take a nap. He didn’t seem to mind me, so I practiced some selfies. We saw another one just outside the bathroom, but he was in a deep sleep so we let him be.

We walked over to a shop called Pedal and Flipper to rent bikes for the day. No cars are allowed on the island so you can either get a tour van around for the day, rent bikes, bring your own bike, or walk. Bikes cost about $30 each ($10 more since the blog I read about it!) They we’re surprisingly nice bikes though.

We took off toward the area that has a pink lake. In summer months, micro-algae accumulate in the salty lake and turn it a vibrant, hot pink. We weren’t sure when this happens, so we were a bit disappointed when we arrived and the lake was a normal lake color. But we still learned something.

From here we biked uphill and over to Catherine Bay. The weather was absolutely heavenly. It was about 75 degrees, sunny, with a light breeze. We enjoyed the views for a bit and then let Carl go southward to explore the whole island while Karen and I headed along the northern shore, back toward town.

Back in town we found a cute cafe that had tons of quokkas outside. We both ordered salads and it was so nice to eat some fresh vegetables, though they were doused in dressing. Carl came and joined us, showing us his immaculate quokka selfies. I was determined to get one for myself so we went out on the cafe porch and had a photo shoot.

The key is to get your phone on the other side of the quokka, just below his face, and hope he sits up. If he sits up with his mouth open, it looks like he is smiling. It’s adorable. They were obviously used to humans (and being fed!) but we didn’t feed them or seem to pester them while we were snapping pictures.

The day went by quickly and all of a sudden it was 4pm and time to get back on the ferry. We met Martin at Gage Road, the same brewery we had gone to on our first day in Perth when we had missed the ferry. We watched an amazing sunset from the bar’s patio area.

We deferred to Martin for where we should eat dinner before we had to head to the airport. He wanted to take us to one more bar before eating, so we tagged along. You wouldn’t have noticed it from the street, but as we ducked into the dark and crowded room, we could see it was a popular spot. The place was called Darling Darling and it was old timey nautical themed with huge coils of rope lining the walls. Empty peanut shells littered the floor. At the entrance, three big, white candles burned on top of a barrel with what looked like years worth of melted wax piled onto it.

We had some beers and reminisced over our time in Perth. Then we needed to eat something if we were ever going to make our plane. We went over to a Mexican restaurant. Martin warned us to not have high expectations but it was still disappointing. Carl and I split a ground beef burrito and the three of us split a margarita fish bowl (there was a discount for them on Fridays). Then we all piled into a cab back to Martin’s place. We still had some packing to do so Martin put on some loud hype music and threw us another beer to motivate us. It helped for the packing but then by the time we got to the airport, we felt awful.

Our flight was a little delayed but we didn’t care. I got a nice nap while we waited to board and somehow got some sleep on the 6 hour journey across the country from southwest to northeast. We had a smooth flight overall except that Karen had to sit next to the Australian couple version of Ren and Stimpy.