Well we finally got there! The wind dropped, the rain stopped and the ferry ran 🙂 .

When we rebooked our ferry trip scheduled for yesterday (and cancelled) to today, which was departure day from the caravan park, the lady from the ferry company told us we’d be fine getting one of the 3 spots that would allow us to steal two spaces in the paid carpark so we could park with the van hitched up. We rode our bikes out there on Saturday and decided there was a lot of risk with this strategy so paid for an extra night at the caravan park (after sweet talking the reception lady to move the people booked on our site tonight to another site) so we could stay on for the bulk of today. When we arrived at the wharf just after 8am for our 9am ferry there were no spots available for a van…… major stress averted!

Bob and I ended up doing today on our own as we were the only ones not getting our 4wd/motorhome/caravan serviced today. Lucky for us, however we have our tyre changeout and service happening in Busselton before the end of the week so we all have to do our maintenance.

We arrived on the island around 10am. We had booked bike hire in our original booking (we were too lazy to change out our hitch on the car to bring our bikes over) and it was automatically transferred to today’s crossing. Note to anyone thinking of doing this – bring your own bikes! The bikes we had today were terrible. 3 of the 7 gears sort of worked on my bike and with the island being quite hilly it was a serious workout for our recovering lungs. Regardless of that we’ve had the most amazing day and managed to pump out 21km on the poor excuses for bikes while out enjoying the sights.

We literally landed on the jetty and were greeted by Quokkas! And here I was worried this would be a repeat of the Manta Ray day. Melissa, tell Doug it didn’t matter that I bought a Quokka magnet before we came…. 🙂

Sadly, these super cute little beings are way too comfortable with people forcing themselves on them for selfies etc. I enjoyed making good use of my zoom lens to get shots of them in their natural space. Having said that, I couldn’t make a beeline quick enough for the one with a baby in its’ pouch which broke the quokka fence and made it inside the bakery area….

Once Bob had coffee onboard and I had quokka photos in the bag it was time to embark on an island explore. Rottnest history is quite chequered. It was used as an aboriginal prison from 1838 until 1904. 4000 prisoners were kept on the island with 370 people buried there. More recently, it was an important military post, particularly in the Second World War when Fremantle was the biggest submarine base in the southern hemisphere. We saw lots of this history while riding around the island. We rode the train tracks for the train that used to deliver ammunition etc to the posts.

Aside from the history, the island is so beautiful. We enjoyed the ride immensely. Many coves and beaches, some great for snorkelling, others just a great outlook. Two lighthouses have been built here. Spam alert – lots of photos incoming 🙂 .

As we were heading back to the ferry, I saw just the cutest baby quokka chasing its mum around. So one last quokka photo to finish off…

The others have all had a productive day, even if not as exciting as ours. The Scott’s got both their car and van serviced on opposite sides of Perth but still managed to find the rogue Perth based Mandurah giant. They have returned to the caravan park in South Fremantle for tonight before heading south tomorrow.

The Allen’s had a service booked for Mav as well. They have done around 10km of walking and have moved down to Waroona for the night.

We have done a big drive of around 200km down to Busselton tonight. We had booked the car in to get new tyres tomorrow a while ago so needed to make sure we made it through. Looking forward to seeing this place in daylight tomorrow.