G'Day

Before I tell you about today's activities I will just give you a quick run down on yesterday's venture. We took a walk down to the Swan River and climbed up the Swan Bells tower, it's not very high but the bells housed in the modern tower are old and ring out often. If you are up there when they do you can see them in action.

From here we headed back into town and Mel bought a new bag, I am so glad to see the back of the tatty brown thing she has been carting around and you can see in nearly all the photos!!!!

Today being Sunday we had to do something good and we sure did. We left Barrack Street Jetty at 9am for a day out on Rottnest Island. We headed down the Swan River and into Fremantle Harbour then out across the Indian Ocean to Rottnest.

The island lies about 20km from Freo' and is just beautiful, it was named by the Dutch explorer Vlamingh and translates as Rats Nest on the account of him seeing what he thought were rats there in 1696 but they were in fact Quokkas.

A Quokka is a small marsupial related to the wallaby and they are cute and furry but do look like a giant rat I suppose.

Once on the island we spent a couple of hours exploring Thomson Bay and walking on the beaches, which are excellent. After lunch we took a tour of the island and managed to see Osprey nests on the rocks out at sea, which are pretty big and we also saw lots of black Skinks in the under growth. We took a ride up to Wadjemup Lighthouse for a good view of the island. Wadjemup is what the aboriginals called the island and they have links right back 7000 years when it was still attached to Australia.

Rottnest Island is an A class reserve for wildlife and has some world class snorkelling and diving available. We both wish that we could have stayed a few days to really explore the place.

We were both sad to leave the island this evening but both said that we would be back as it has been one of the best places that we have visited while in Australia.

Lots of Love

M & M

xx