Rottnest Island Trip

What an awesome island! I'd been to Rottnest once before, but I was a lot younger and it was only for a day trip so we didn't get to explore too much. This year I went for 3 days for a short relaxing trip with Matt's family. We stayed at the Rottnest Central Bungalows, and spent our time relaxing and trying to see as much of the island as possible.

We took it easy the first day, and decided to spend it on the beach and finish it off with some jetty fishing. I'd actually never been fishing before so I was a bit worried about how I'd take the whole fish-murder thing. While everyone was still settling in, I had already baited and lowered my line. About 30 seconds later I had two herrings fighting for my hook! I managed to catch one of them and pull it in, and after about a minute of it slipping out of my hands like a bar of soap we had our first catch in the bucket. How exciting! It did surprise me a bit how difficult it was to get the fish in the bucket after it had been caught. I guess I just sort of expected it to give up once it was caught, but it really struggled to live which did upset me a little bit :( I'm glad that I saw it through though, and we ended up eating it the next day which made me feel very self sufficient!

That night we caught 4 edible fish, and a lot more aquarium fish. I caught a weird frilly black thing with lots of spines, and Elissa caught a pretty yellow and black stripy fish. Apparently I had a very exciting first fishing experience, because usually you don't catch that many fish, especially not so many varieties!

The next day we hired some bikes and decided to ride around to Mary Cove to do some snorkeling. A tip to anyone deciding to hire bikes - get the mountain bikes! It's only about $7 more expensive, but it just did not occur to us that it would make such a difference. Everyone got single speed bikes except for James, and he was the only one who didn't struggle up the multitude of hills.

It was an awesome ride with heaps of beautiful views. It took a while to get to Mary Cove since the wind was against us and the aforementioned one speed bikes whipped our asses on the hills, but it was certainly worth the effort. It was the first time I'd even been snorkeling, and it was amazing! The conditions were apparently quite bad because of the waves, so I can imagine what it would be like on a good day.

On the way back we stopped at a couple of the lakes. From the map I think we stopped at Serpentine, Pearse, and Hershel lakes, which each had gorgeous crystal formations of salt, and really strange red to blue gradients in the water. I'm not sure what causes the strange gradient but it was really eerie and beautiful.

We took it easy on the last day and played some putt putt at the Family Fun Park. It was another first for me, and I managed to come 3rd! I usually suck at all ball sports in general so 3/5 is not bad at all.

Despite the sunburn and bruised bum from the bikes, I had an awesome time. I'll definitely be going back even if it's just to spend the day on one of Rottnest's secluded beaches!