We made two trips – one on holiday and one while we were living in Perth
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November 2024
Every guide, says to go to Rottness Island, and the guides are right. It is a park with little development and the primary transport is bike or hop on/hop off bus. We took a ferry and rented a bike (same service) and it was about a 30 minute ferry ride. In addition to the beaches and snorkeling, an attraction is the Quokkas – a rat-like creature that is not scared of people and will come up and eat out of your hand. We only ended up seeing them at a food place – they are nocturnal and most of them are apparently asleep. We had a cool partly cloudy day (I had reports from co-workers about how hot and sunny it had been in Perth all week) and it was still a great ride around the Island, but a little too cold for me to snorkel. We rode around the entire Island – probably 25 miles with some stop for hikes down to beaches….it was the best beach bike ride I have ever been on. At one of the points, we saw whales migrating by. Spent most of the day there and light rain started as we headed on the ferry home. Definitely have to go back on a sunny day – the clarity of the water and the white sand create a bright blue even in the clouds, but when the sun is out it is almost glowing.
March 2025
Our second trip to Rottness was as “locals” – we walked to the ferry in Elizabeth Quay (which took us down the Swan River to Freo where we picked up the Freo passengers) and did not rent bikes as this trip was focused on snorkeling. But similar to our first trip, we had overcast and threat of rain (one of very few days with any chance of rain). Without a bike, you take hop on/hop off buses around the island. If they ran to there timetables, it would be great but twice we were waiting over 30 minutes. The three primary areas to snorkle are Parker Point (too windy on this trip), Little Salmon Bay (was OK), and The Basin. Still only saw silver, white, and black fish – no brightly colored fish.
Note – the light areas are white sand and the dark areas are grassy bottom.
We finished off the day at Pinky’s beach – in tribute to a old resort from the 1920s and had a couple of Quokka lurking around – harmless and friendly as they have no predators on the island. On the home, we sampled two of the local Western Australia beers on the boat ride back – not my favorites.
