We picked Tom up from the airport today and had lunch in Fremantle, en route to the beautiful island of Rottnest. It was a lovely sunny day which was a relief as the weather had been a little dicey over the preceding days. Caught ferry at 2 pm and arrived at a pretty little cottage overlooking the aquamarine waters of Thompson Bay 45 minutes later. Mum was stoked! Think that she thought she would be in a cabin with bunk beds! Actually, we nearly were- the booking system was that complex.
No cars are allowed on the island, so everyone cuts around by bike which gives the place a wonderfully serene and calm pace. The first day, we had a trial cycle to Basin cove which had the clearest water I have ever seen. Mum confessed to not having ridden her bike for the last year and so we tried to persuade her to get a three wheeler to help with the on and off aspect of cycling, but she was having none of it. She actually managed really well until the following day when we cycled to Little Salmon Bay. It was a long way and poor Mum must have been a bit tired because she overbalanced getting on her bike and fell on to the gravel. After picking her up, she went alright until the next hill when after walking up it, she tried to remount and fell off in to a bush. There are few things worse than seeing your Mum fall off a bike twice and knowing that she still has 5 km to cycle home! She is made of stern stuff though, and after we patched her up with plasters, she hopped back on and cycled all the way back to Thompson Bay.
The next day, both Mum and Occy decided they'd done enough cycling and opted for the bus tour of the island. Ned, Tom and I decided to spend the morning cycling to the very far end of the Island. Tom had heard that there was a secret seal colony down a dirt track and was keen to find it. The weather was lovely - warm and dry. We found the colony and watched the 20 or so seals playing in front of us. The water was a clear cobalt and there was a happy absence of the stench that often permeates these colonies. We sat on some rocks only a few metres above the sea and drank in the pristine view. Then we looked at the wave breaking off the end of the cape and understood why no one was surfing it.
Rottnest pub was another highlight for us. We ate there twice - the first time on spec to try it out, the second because the food was so amazing the first time. I don't expect i will find better pork ribs anywhere else in a hurry- I can still taste their melting sweetness now. Yum!
Overall, and I am writing this blog three months after our visit, Rottnest rates as one of my favourite places visited on this trip. Atmospherically, it felt like one of the Scilly Isles, only hot- as if you had slipped back to the 1940's but with better food. I think that it was purely the absence of cars that created this feeling and despite the irony that without cars we would never have traveled here in the first place, it made me wonder that perhaps we would all be a bit happier if they'd never been invented.