Go west - to Rottnest

A couple of years ago I discovered that being outside all day in bright sunshine was the quick way to reset my biological clock and get over jetlag fast, so my first morning in Australia found me on the ferry from Perth travelling 19 km down the Swan River to Fremantle, and then out to the island of Rottnest 18 km off the coast. The river winds its way in great sweeps towards the sea past sandbanks with eponymous black swans, and acres of marinas, one complete with three-storey boat store:



The city of Fremantle grew as a port at the mouth of the river and now most of the cargo is containerised:



Out to sea, Rottnest island is 11 by 4.5 km, and formed of soft limestone. In places there are cliffs along the coast, but much of the island is covered by rolling sand dunes.

'Rottnest' is a corruption of 'Rattenest' -meaning rats' nest -, the name given to the island by Willem to Vlamingh. His 'rats' were actually quokkas, native marsupials which look like a cross between a wallaby and a hamster. The lack of predators on the island has allowed them to survive there when they have been more or less extirpated from the mainland, and also means that they are relativley tolerant of camera waving tourists:

Privately owned vehicles aren't allowed onto the island, so the best way of getting about is to hire a bicycle from the ferry company. The bikes are issued on the pier as visitors get off the boat:



Once I'd found a quokka, my next port of call on my bicycle tour was one of the island lakes, in search of a small dapper wading bird, the red-capped plover. The vegetation told me that it was suitable habitat with brackish water, but the smell was the give away that it would be the perfect spot:

Brackish lagoons are an acquired taste, sometimes displaying a stark beauty:

The birds are banded stilts - tubbier and more gregarious than the black-winged stilt found in Europe, and often feeding while swimming rather than strutting along on their long legs. And that's a red-capped plover between the water's edge and the vegetation at the left-hand edge of the photo.

After the smelly joys of the lagoon it was time to retrace my steps to the village and board a smaller boat for a tour around the island.

The tour guide teased us by asking whether we wanted to go searching for his suggested quarry, but the answer to his question was of course yes. We headed off north from the island and after only 10 minutes saw the tell tale signs. Another five minutes and we were in among them:

We saw at least three or four together, and the closest we got was the one that swam under the boat and flicked its tail out of the water as it dived once it was on the other side. The humpback whales are passing south on their way to their summer feeding grounds in the antarctic - following the 30 m isobath down the coast of Australia, with such regularity that the locals call it Humpback Highway. In winter they return north for the females to calve in relatively warm water. There were other sea mammals to be seen as well: New Zealand fur seals that are breeding in increasing numbers ...

... and on a sandy beach, an Australian sea-lion that deigned to raise its head:

 

In one of the rocky bays, a pair of ospreys were setting up home for the breeding season. Nest sites are reused over decades, outliving the individual birds that use them, with the nests reaching an impressive size over the years:

If you travelled due west from the island, the next landfall would be the east coast of Africa, and if that continent had drifted a few hundred kilometers further north before crashing into Europe, you'd miss South Africa altogether and continue to South America. It's not surprising that even in relatively calm weather the seas at the western end of the island are spectacular:

On the calmer side of the island I was astonished that we could see the skyscapers along the river front at Perth - 25 to 30 kilometers away ...

... the same iconic view that greeted us as we returned from the island in the ferry.