Rottnest - home of the happiest animal in the world
With berries coming into season, I'm working a bit more. Coupled with the erratic weather (high winds) in Perth recently, which meant we had to spend our rest days doing maintenance and rebuilding the strucutres in the farm that has been damaged by the winds, off days are becoming a rare privilege. And since in my last post I bitched about not spending enough on the 'Attractions' tab in my Finance spreadsheet document, on my last off day, we decided to make an impromptu day trip to Rottnest Island. Sidenote: this day-trip hit our budget with an almost A$200 price in the August attractions tab - a good 13 times more than July.
Rottnest Island is a 30 min ferry ride from Freemantle (with a A$70 round trip price, urgh). We had slept in a little and woke up pretty late, slightly before 9 am, since I don't get much rest on work days. With the sun blazing into our eyes by then, we quickly realised it was a rare good-weathered day. Made the snap decision to not waste the good weather and to do a day-trip to Rottnest. She quickly googled on the ferry timings and realised that if we were to quickly prep, we could possibly make the 10am ferry and if we missed it, the 11am one. I checked the route there and its a 30min drive. So we hurriedly packed our day-packs, made a lunch of sandwiches and chips, then rushed down to Freemantle.
We arrived at the ferry terminal at 9.55am all excited since we thought we might actually make the 10am ferry. Parked, got out, saw the 10am ferry at the terminal and then realised the carpark we parked at, right at the ferry terminal had a maximum parking time of 4h (wts!). I'm sorry but who thought it would be a good idea to put a 4P carpark next to the ferry terminal to Rottnest Island? Most people do a full-day trip or stay 1 night on the island. And so while we enquired with the staff at the ferry terminal for another carpark with full day parking, we watched the 10am ferry pull away. Glad in the sense that we did not pre-book the 10am ferry tickets while on the way over - we were seriously contemplating it to save some time.
And then came the next shocker (of sorts), they require masks on the ferry. Its been slightly more than a month since we arrived and the only time I wore a mask in Australia was at the airport, and even then took it off at the immigration once we googled and realise that masks are not mandated anywhere anymore (except on public transport). Yes I know, the ferry would be considered 'public transport' but it just never crossed our minds. Thankfully had left my Singapore-purchased and worn, Uniqlo mask (sponsor me!) in the car. Boarded the ferry and surprise surprise, not everyone had their masks on. Most had boarded wearing a mask then took it off the moment they are in the cabin. Anyway, 30 choppy minutes later (weird, considering the weather was otherwise so good), we arrived at the home of supposedly the happiest animal in the world.
We arrived on the island at 11.30am. With a 4pm return ferry to catch, we had a good 4-ish hours to explore the island. At 19 sq km, walking to explore was ruled out - we were left with the hop on- hop off shuttle bus services or renting a bike. The bike rental was $30 per pax a day (the horrors), bus was $20 - bus it was, although I think we would both have much prefered riding if we had more time. It would have given us the opportunity to really explore the island rather than being at the mercy of the bus timetable.
For an island that supposedly has 12,000 quokkas living on it, the weirdest thing was, we didn't see any until the last 30 min of the trip - and it was when we returned from visiting the sites, back to the main bus terminal did we see them. They were just lining the streets in the area. Apparently, we were not the only ones who missed out on seeing the quokkas, cos when we arrived at the main bus station, the rest on board (all 8 of us - it was the 2nd last bus and everyone else had either returned back to the main area or slowly taking their time to explore since they have accoms on the island) the bus rushed off the bus to take pictures with/of the animals. The quokkas are meant to be the happiest animals in the world. I think I was happier for ourselves that we actually managed to see them on this trip. We were slightly bothered up to that point that we have come to see these quokkas and might very well have gone the entire day without seeing a single one. But all's well that ends well.
Comments
Post a Comment