Australia Holiday 2007 - Rottnest Island

 Towards the end of the holiday we spent a night on Rottnest Island - a little Island off Perth. This Island was formerly an Aboriginal Prison, an Army gun emplacement (to protect the port of Fremantle in World War II). Now it is a popular destination for scuba divers, cyclists etc.

The fast ferry that took us from Hillary's Harbour to Rottnest.

Rottnest PD!

A particularly cheeky Quokka. It was these Indigenous Marsupials that led the first westerners to see this island (the Dutch - although Whalers had been using the island as a stop off for ages) to believe that these were large Bush Rats (especially when they found some large holes dug by birds). Thus the island ended up being called Rottnest (Rat's Nest).

Emma in Steve Zissou mode. This is at a beach called The Basin and is very popular with snorkelers. This particular part of the beach goes from 5 feet deep to about 20 feet in a particularly sharp drop and the dark areas either side of the picture are reefs that are only about 3 feet deep.

This is typical of how busy the outer beaches were on the island!

The old Governors residence - nowadays there are no private residences allowed on the Island. This has been turned into a particularly nice restaurant.

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