11th Feb 2011 A day at Rottnest Island

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An early start saw us taking the 8.00 ferry from Hillarys Marina to Rottnest Island. The crossing is about 19 km and took about one hour and was quite choppy, and they were handing out sick-bags on the journey, although we felt no ill-effects from the crossing.

Once we had landed we hires bikes and snorkelling equipment, and set out to find a nice cove. The journey on the bikes included some hills where we had to get off and push. Diane was not impressed by a sign that said beware of the venomous snakes and was on her guard for the rest of the day. Rottnest Island is also the home of the quokka's, these are small marsupials that are part of the kangaroo/wallaby family. Diane thought they looked like "large rats" and was not too keen on these either, although they are generally considered to be cute and friendly.

After about a 5 km bike ride we arrived at"Little Salmon Bay", we locked up our bikes and went down to spend the day on the beach. Most of the areas on Rottnest are conservation areas. We were on the beach from around 10.00 to 14.00 and in that time we did some snorkelling, sunbathing, swimming,reading, sleeping and enjoyed a packed lunch.
The snorkelling was good and there were some sizeable fish quite close in to the beach.

We headed back tp Thomson Bay (where we would board the ferry) at around 14.00. The going seemed a lot harder going back having perhaps had a little too much sun, and the haet of the day seeming quite a bit hotter.
I was quite impressed with Diane - with her bike-riding skills, she was even using the gears to tackle some of the hills!!!

When we got back to Thompson Bay we were sweltering. We handed back the hired bikes and snorkelling equipment, and had a shower and a change of clothes. We then "murdered" a couple of beers at the local hotel bar, while we waited for the return ferry.

We caught the 16.30 ferry back to Hillarys Marina, Perth. We were due to meet up with a friends family for dinner, but these arrangements fell through. We eventually ended up having dinner at the Breakwater restaurant at Hillarys Marina, before getting a taxi back to Graham's house feeling rather tired after a long enjoyable day

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