Day 190 (December 29): Rottnest Island

To Plan or Not To Plan. This is my existential struggle. It is my tendency, which I attribute to genetics (“Hi dad! Hi mom!”), to want to have a daytrip planned to the hour if not the minute. This approach doesn’t suit my wife, though she might tolerate it, but it definitely doesn’t work with kids. It’s a life lesson that adults can be the skeleton but the skin is going to hang however the children decide it will.

Rottnest Island is a 30-minute ferry ride from Fremantle, a coastal suburb of Perth 30 minutes from our house. From the guides and blogs and podcasts, I have known for months that this would be on our itinerary. I received a lot of advice that we should spend a night on the island in order to enjoy its tranquility in the evening after all the daytrippers departed. 

In retrospect, I wish I had pulled the trigger on that plan because obviously it’s impossible to book a room for six on the island with little notice, especially on a holiday weekend. So that decision got made for me (or made by my indecision). It’s too bad, too, because Rottnest on a beautiful Sunday during the holidays is absolutely madness.

When I booked our ferry tickets a few days in advance, I was confused by the online booking system for bikes. The ferry operator offered adult bikes and the on-island concession had bikes in the appropriate size for Ali and Cate and maybe Henry but definitely not Lily; they had nothing available on the day for adults. So I decided we’d arrive and do what we could do. It turns out that doesn’t not include renting bikes.

We did not arrive early, as we were advised. The earliest ferry we could book was at 11, which did make for a relaxed, unhurried morning. But the bike rental situation was a total SNAFU so we had some lunch by the waterfront and next to yet another amazing, canopied playground. Rottnest is famous for its small and mostly-tame marsupial, the Quokka. Henry investigated the specimen that had been assigned to amuse the restaurant’s customers during this time slot (I’m half kidding, I think the animals are probably unionized and given hazard pay for this job).

Having failed at bikes, we rented snorkels and boarded a bus that would take us to one of the island’s many beaches. The circumnavigation by bus takes about an hour, which gave us plenty of time to see the bicyclists having a miserable time on the moderate hills and the significant wind gusts. Maybe our luck wasn’t so bad (Elise and I know a thing or two about biking in terrible wind).

The beach was very good. It started badly, with Ali and Cate scraping themselves on some coral in the shallow water but Henry and Lily immediately began tormenting sea life in the pristine water. One highlight was a beautiful shell that Ali found in about six inches of water. The shell was a perfect cone and at least 8 inches long. It also turned out to have an occupant, a crab, which we’re glad we discovered before we brought the shell back to our apartment.

As an aside, it took about 45 minutes to exit the water. Our kids are not skilled at getting from wet-and-sandy to dry-and-dressed. By the time we caught the bus and returned to the village we had barely enough time to return the gear before the shop closed.

We had dinner at the same restaurant/playground/Quokka location as lunch. We shared a table with a family that turned out to have linkages to (and knowledge of) New Zealand and Singapore so we gathered some good insight before catching our ferry. 

It was one of those moments we had hoped for: enjoying conversation with kind strangers while our kids played with an assortment of dissimilar peers. Unfortunately, this moment also included Henry putting his finger too close to the business end of the adorable, semi-tame Quokka and so he has some small cuts on his finger tip to prove he was there. Definitely a case of “could have been worse.”

The last thing that went wrong that day was the temperature on the ferry: freezing! There had been a very light rain before we boarded so we were damp and now the AC was on full blast. We found some less-cold seats and endured the half-hour return trip to land and another 30-minute drive home. The kids collapsed into bed and so did we.

Inasmuch as I’m in the business of offering travel advice, I would say that somebody shold definitely include Rottnest in their Western Australia itineraries. My return trip would include an overnight stay because I think it would be nice to be there early in the morning without much company and without the hassle of waking up to catch the first ferry (especially when four kids are involved). Short of this, I’d make sure to have my bike bookings done well in advance.

Yes, this means more planning and less spontenaity. In general, I’m teaching myself (and being taught) to get over my predisposition and allow the kids’ chemistry to dictate pace and flow. But for this kind of special daytrip, I think it would be better to have more skeleton than I provided on this occasion. But that’s just me. At least, the version of me at the very end of 2019.