 My trip to Rottnest was one of my favorite parts of my trip thus far. I got to spend time with my friends as well as experience an entirely new world while still remaining in Australia! (Click on photos for larger images.)
Rottnest Island
To conclude my tuition-free week, a group of seven MTU students decided to take a trip out to Rottnest Island and camp for three days. Rottnest is an island off the coast of Western Australia, and the only ways to get there is by boat or by plane. We chose to take a boat and left the town of Fremantle at 9:30 Thursday morning.
The ferry ride was only half an hour, and when we arrived at the island, we went to check into our campsite. Setting up our campsite didn’t take too long, and then we were off to explore the island. Our plan was to rent bikes on Friday, so we didn’t go too far from our campsite on Thursday. We went to a beach called The Basin, which was beautiful, and had amazingly soft sand. The guys went snorkeling (there was a rock shelf that dropped off to some deep water with some huge fish!) and the girls just relaxed on the beach.
 After the guys got bored with snorkeling, we went off to explore some of the huge rock formations that make up the coast of Rottnest Island. There were lots of caves and coves to explore! After a tasty dinner of sausages and baked beans, it was pretty dark, so we went back to the beach to look at the stars. The night was perfectly clear and the view of the stars was incredible, I’ve never been able to see so many stars and shooting stars in one night. We also went to look at the beach because the tide was so low, and we got to see an octopus swimming in a small pool of water!
 One of the most interesting aspects of the island is the presence of the animal called a quokka. They are relatively small marsupials (about the size of a hare or domestic cat) with rat-like tails that move about in the same way that kangaroos do. Native only to Rottnest Island, there are thousands of quokkas moving about the island at any given time. Due to the high tourist presence on the island, the quokkas have become unafraid of humans and will do almost anything to get at their food. My group left the campsite for about half an hour, and when we came back there was a quokka in one of the tents trying to eat our breakfast for the next day! They are pretty cute animals, but it’s hard to get used to their lack of apprehension around people! We were all worried that we wouldn’t get to see any quokkas on our entire trip to Rottnest; by the end of the trip, I think we were wishing that we hadn’t seen any!
 Friday was an early morning, and after breakfast, we set off to rent bikes for the day. Since there were seven of us, we rented three tandem bikes and one single bike. I thought the tandem bikes were a lot of fun to ride, but I don’t know if everyone had as much fun throughout the day. We biked roughly 18 kilometers, and saw a lot of amazing scenery. Cape Vlamingh is the name of the western most tip of the island, and that was where the most picturesque scenery was. We were able to see the huge waves crashing into the coast, as well as the impact that the waves had had over the past thousands of years!
 After a little more riding, we came up on the Oliver Hill Lookout, which was a station during World War II. The enormous gun still sits atop the hill and was capable of shooting at targets roughly 28 kilometers away! Our bike tour was pretty much finished after this stop since we were all getting pretty tired. We returned to our campsite and relaxed for the rest of the night.
(Photo, left) MTU students Adam, Jason, Heather, and me sitting on the gun at Oliver Hill; (below, l to r) Heather, Jason, Wade, me, Adam, and Ben.
 Our ferry for the ride back left at 2:30 on Saturday afternoon, so we were left with about half a day to explore the island. We wandered about before deciding to return to our beach for a couple of hours. Wade and Adam decided to try their hand at fishing, but were unsuccessful, as the three girls watched their adventure. After the beach and fishing, we returned to the settlement part of the island where we boarded our ferry and returned to the Australian mainland.
My trip to Rottnest was one of my favorite parts of my trip thus far. I got to spend time with my friends as well as experience an entirely new world while still remaining in Australia! It’s back to classes this week, but I can’t believe that I only have five more weeks in Australia!Until next week,
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