Day 6 (November 8)

Today was a fairly lazy day for us. The only thing on the agenda was a tour of the island, and since it is only 10 kilometers long, we weren’t in any great hurry. It gets light here at 5:00 am and we were up by 5:30. After breakfast and a bit of blog catch-up work, we were on the road at 9:00.

Our route took us from the campground, on the east end of the island, clockwise roughly paralleling the coast, to the western tip of the island. From there, it’s nothing but ocean for 10,500 kilometers to Cape Town, South Africa. Along the way, the road passed several very scenic bays, with vibrant blue and emerald green water contrasted against white sand beaches.

For a relatively small island, Rottnest has quite a variety of wildlife, as evidenced by what we saw today:

Quokka (of course)
King’s Skink
Osprey
Pied Oystercatcher
Australian Pelican
Dugite (venomous snake)
Rock Parrot
Darter (similar to a cormorant)

A very impressive 70 year old osprey nest

A curious quokka investigating the ferry tag on Mattie’s handlebars

We got back to The Settlement (the name of the developed part of the island) at 2:00 pm and had a nice burger lunch at one of the local eateries, making sure to guard our food from some marauding ravens and seagulls. Then it was back to the campground for an evening of R&R before the start of the real ride tomorrow when we get back to the mainland.

Posted by Scott