Rottnest?

August 16^th

Will we? Won’t we? Will we? Won’t we? Eventually we decided a bit of rain wasn’t going to spoil the one thing we all wanted to do while we were in Perth – so off to Rotto we go! We booked online and the only ferry over was leaving at 12.30pm which was good because we were able to have lunch before we left and took snacks with us.

The ferry over was really rough – poor Thomas didn’t handle it well and was looking very green about halfway over – which was probably made worse by the fact that Claire Luke and I all wanted to sit upstairs at the front which is where there would have been the most movement. Paul and Thomas ended up downstairs at the back while the rest of us went ‘whoa’ every time a wave splashed high enough to reach the window.

Eventually Tom’s time in hell came to an end and we arrive at Rottnest. Of course the minute we stepped off the ferry it started raining – but have no fear we all packed our rain jackets. We set out for the visitor centre and bought our bus tickets. Our original plan had been to hop on the bus and jump off somewhere but the buses only came every hour and the weather was a bit too unpredictable to spend an hour anywhere so we stayed on the bus and went for a tour right around the island (about 45mins) and our bus driver was great – just like our own personal tour guide.

The bays looked just divine and the big kids and I were very disappointed that it wasn’t warmer so we could go snorkelling – the general consensus was that we would have to come back over here when it was warmer which won’t be any hardship because we have all fallen in love with WA.

The most important thing though was that we got to see some Quokkas. We got to see a mother and her baby and then once we started walking around the settlement there were heaps. What surprised me most about them was how tame they seemed to be - not at all phased by touristed like me getting up in their face with a camera.

Once back at the settlement we went to the museums and learnt about the history of the island and how it was used as an aboriginal prison and a boys reformatory and how it used to provide a massive amount of Western Australia’s salt.

We headed back on the 4.30pm ferry which to Thomas’s relief was a great deal calmer and drove back to camp – picking up pizza for dinner. After dinner we went down to Deb and Mikes camp with the plan to have a last drink with them seeing it was our last night together but in the end it was just too cold to sit outside and snuggling under a warm doona won out.