Quokkas

Rottnest Island is located 30 minutes by boat from Fremantle, and since its discovery by the Dutch more than 300 years ago has been famous for the tiny marsupials that live there. The quokkas are adorably cute, unafraid, curious, and look at all times like they’re smiling. Clearly, this was an island we had to visit.

We arrived on the ferry around 10am with not a quokka in sight, but since we had six hours before the return trip we weren’t too concerned. The options for circumnavigating the island are either a three hour bike ride, or a hop-on, hop-off bus, so we opted for the latter. As we were waiting for the bus to depart I noted that the gathering crowd was of the – shall we say, less active? – sort, and I was starting to wonder what we’d gotten ourselves into, especially a few minutes later when an elderly lady on a motorized chair came crashing through the rope barriers and popped a wheelie into a curb before someone finally managed to get her under control. It was an inauspicious beginning, but luckily things improved from there.

The island is undeveloped aside from the settlement on the east side, so once the bus departed it was all sand dunes and sea views as we headed to the west end. While the amount of droppings on the island was evidence of a large (and well fed) quokka population, the nocturnal critters remained elusive, but on our short hike we ran into an osprey, terns, sea lions, king skinks, and (annoyingly) a plague of flies. After an hour of peaceful walking along the beaches we re-boarded the bus and took it to Geordie Bay, a spot where we were told the quokkas would be active during the day.

Geordie Bay had a general store with low, saloon style doors with signs on them indicating that they were meant to keep quokkas out. We took that as a good omen, and a short time later met our first of the gopher-sized little hoppers who wandered up to us, took a few sniffs, then moved on to the next thing that caught his attention. More quokkas soon appeared, and we played the roles of silly tourists as they came up to us, sniffed, posed for photos, and then investigated the next item in their path. After another short hike into the main settlement even more showed up, and while I’m normally not one to get too close to wild animals, given their curiosity and lack of fear, as well as the fact that the visitor center has a poster that says “did you get your quokka selfie?”, we joined Roger Federer, Margot Robbie, and thousands of others who have left the island with selfies with the residents. Audrey laughed uncontrollably for the whole latter part of our visit, and it was two happy visitors who returned to Fremantle at the end of the day.