Rottnest Island, Australia

October-November 2003

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
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by Lyn Hancock

Snack-stop on one of Rottnest’s many white sand beaches.

Everybody’s favourite island in Western Australia is Rottnest Island, 10 km off Fremantle—such a laid-back family resort (and nature reserve) that you have to literally win a lottery to find accommodation during school holidays. I spent many summers living aboard my dad’s boat on ‘Rotto’ as the locals affectionately call it. I’ve fished, biked, hiked, swum, snorkeled and flown over this unique and fascinating island (no vehicles, only bikes allowed). But my day in a double Perception sit on- top with Capricorn Kayak Tours was the first time I had paddled it. Exploring Rottnest by kayak is the most intimate way to experience its unique features.

There are plenty of places in the world where you can find clear, emerald and turquoise water, pure white sandy beaches and colorful fish and corals living in limestone reefs or wrecked ships. But where else can you paddle past original limestone buildings built by convicts and aboriginal prisoners when the island was a penal colony?

Where else are you joined for dinner at your tent, cottage, local restaurant or while sun tanning on the beach by quokkas, knee-high marsupials that one early Dutch navigator to reef-ridden Western Australia called Rottenest meaning “rats’ nest” because he mistook the quokkas for huge rats!

Rottnest Island is the only place in the world you are likely to find this intriguing little wallaby. Another rare creature is a sea hare which disconcertingly looks like a human liver and often washes up on the beaches around Rotto.

We launched from the limestone boathouse in Thompson Bay where my grandfather, in charge of the aboriginal convicts at the turn of the past century, once launched a small rowboat to look for escaped prisoners. The Fremantle Doctor (nickname for the afternoon sea breeze) had come in earlier than usual and the sea was choppier than I liked, but we kept close to the raggedy coralline coastline and stopped to snorkel on reefs exposed at low tide and to snack on the beach of a protected bay.

Sting ray.

We paddled along the more protected north shore— past the lighthouse at Bathurst Point, over the shipwreck and through the lagoon at Duck Rock, by the island’s most popular swimming hole at the Basin, around Longreach Bay and Fay’s Bay to our family’s favourite anchorage in Geordie Bay. It’s also possible to paddle another 35 km or so along the north shore to the rugged surf-swept West End, then back east along the less protected southern shore to the Thompson Bay settlement.

Rottnest Island lies in the path of the Leeuwin Current, warm offshore water that enables many tropical creatures to thrive here, so it’s a mecca for snorkellers and birdwatchers. Reefs and flat-topped bommies are studded with spectacular caves, gutters and swimthroughs, lavishly decorated with pink Pocillopora coral, gorgonian coral and sponges, and often teeming with a diverse array of fish life. Craggy limestone cliffs and offshore islets provide nests and perches for birds such as ospreys, pied cormorants, bridled terns, crested terns, reef herons and silver gulls.

But my most intimate memory of Rottnest, apart from quokkas looking for handouts on the beach and foraging through my sleeping bag at night, is standing by my kayak in Geordie Bay caressing the black velvet backs of sting rays. Rotto also has venomous species, but you forget all that when at sunset the winds die down and an orange ball, its fiery heat depleted, drops dramatically into the Indian Ocean. The day’s solid blue sky fades into streaks of pink and red, then orange, indigo and finally black. On Rottnest you can count on clear sky, a brilliant moon, diamond bright stars, and magic day or night whether you are in or out of your kayak.

 

© Lyn Hancock is an author, speaker and freelance writer who lives in Lanztville, BC.

USEFUL AUSTRALIAN CONTACTS Hal Paine of Capricorn Kayak Tours runs kayaking expeditions to Rottnest Island, Penguin and Seal Islands, and Ningaloo in northwest Western Australia: www.capricornkayak.com.au Wayne Felton of Mandurah Sportz rents and sells kayaks in Mandurah and is very helpful: www.kayakswa.com.au Les Hoffman of About Bike Hire rents kayaks (as well as bikes) if you want to paddle the Swan River: www.aboutbikehire.com.au Robyn Khorshid has a website The Urban Paddler: www.iinet.net.au/~rokhor/canoe, which gives free comprehensive kayaking information as well as personal stories of Aussie kayakers Rivergods is another company which sell or rents kayaks and runs daily trips to Seal and Penguin Islands: www.rivergods.com.au.