An Awesome Day On Rottnest Island

Have you ever heard of a quakka? We hadn’t either until we arrived in Australia. We got up close and personal with these rare marsupials during a day trip to Rottnest Island, located a few miles off shore of Perth.

Rottnest is large, 11 kilometers in length so we opted to rent bikes for the day. Despite the long drive to get to the coast we were biking by 8:30 am. I was navigator so I lead us through the center of the island and south to a point with snorkeling. We changed into our swimsuits, paused to check out some hunger quakkas hunting for handouts and froze in our tracks to marvel at all the different shades of turquoise in the water. Michele and Nicholas swam first but said there wasn’t much to see. Justin went out farther while the three of us relaxed in the sun. Michele had heard that Australia’s sun is a lot stronger than we are used to so we lathered up on sunscreen and still got burned. 

Suddenly, our sleepy sunny daze was shattered by Nick’s anxious call.

“Mom-! Snake! Mom, right next to you, look out!” 

Slithering just inches from Michele’s left arm was a big black snake. It was over 4 feet in length and it’s body would have been too thick to wrap my hand around completely. 

Michele was laying on her back so she couldn’t see the beast but she was very calm about everything. In a steady voice she asked again where the snake was and was very still. This was the perfect response to the presence of a dangerous snake. The serpent obviously had no interest in us, it had places to be, things to do. Later, when we got home we did a bit of research and learned that Mom had met a dugite, a common species here in WA that can be deadly. In fact, a few weeks earlier a man had been bitten on Rottnest and had to be airlifted off the island.
Yikes, that first encounter with one of the dangerous critters in this new country was a little too close for comfort!

We continued towards the far end of the island. Even with a short break for lunch and lots of stops to say hi to the resident quakkas we made good time to the west coast. It was the heat of the day and we were all tired with a lot of ground to cover so we didn’t dawdle much.
Rottnest was a lot of fun, we highly recommend it! We biked over 25 kilometers and got to enjoy a nice sunset over the ocean on our ferry ride back to Perth.