Rotto
Tuesday, November 28th - Woke up realizing I'd made a classic mistake. I'd plugged my phone in overnight but in Australia there's often a switch by the plug to turn it on, which i had not done, so i was beginning a planned long day of sightseeing with a 2% battery! Left it charging while we had breakfast at a bakery down the street and it was up to 60% by the time we actually left the hotel, which was better but i still felt i couldn't use my phone much.
We walked from our hotel about a mile and a half to the ferry stop at the waterfront. The old downtown fremantle area near the waterfront was very nice with classic old buildings with wraparound balconies. It looked clean and renovated and altogether like probably a nice area in the evening with all its bars and restaurants.
The colloquial shorthand for Fremantle is apparently Freo, and we saw some plays on the Spanish frio (cold), i suspect, in signs for "Freo ice cream!" and "Freo cold beer!" (I suspect it was influenced by the Spanish in that signage that didn't reference coldness didn't tend to use "freo")
In my in depth research (by which i mean reading the history sections of both their Wikipedia entries) I'm still sort of unclear on the relationships of Fremantle and Perth. Apparently they were both founded as independent towns within months of eachother in 1829; Fremantle at the mouth of the Swan River and Perth about ten miles in. At some point they grew large enough to merge and now the metropolitan area is referred to as Perth, with me course a Perth proper CBD, and Fremantle as the river mouth neighborhood.
There seemed to be four different ferry companies offering transport to Rottnest Island ("Rotto"), with departures at least every half hour and possibly every ten minutes at peak times. Our 9am ferry seemed to be bracketed by other ferry traffic impatient to use the dock.
Weather all day was nice, mostly sunny but a few very brief smatterings of light precipitation. Temperatures in the 70s f / 20s c. Trip to Rottnest Island about forty minutes.
The first Europeans to come to Rottnest Island were the Dutch in 1619, and the name that finally stuck was given by a Dutch captain in 1696, bestowing upon it the beautiful poetic name of "rat nest Island" in Dutch. The "rats" in question are quokkas, adorable little round cat sized marsupials who lack the good sense to fear humans.
Immediately upon reaching the island these adorable things could be seen hopping about, and truly lacking instincts for self preservation one put its head right under my slightly upraised boot to snuffle at a leaf. Fortunately i saw it. We sat and had lunch and a nearby toddler tried repeatedly to jump on one's tail, but this one did have the good sense to seek shelter under me. It was sorely tempting to pat them as they look so soft but signs warn this is strictly forbidden. Though again small children seemed to take no notice and in most cases their parents seemed to take no notice of their children's activities.
There were a number of ravens (?) perched in the fig trees around the eating area, "practicing their Norwegian vowels" as mom cleverly described it.
Another fact we marveled at was when the guide at the lighthouse told us Rottnest had been connected to the mainland only 7,000 years ago. And aboriginal artifacts dating back 30,000 years have been found on the island. They used to walk here. They saw the sea levels rise to separate the island. Well it was probably imperceptibly slowly but at some point in some aboriginals life time it was possible to walk there and then it wasn't.
The guide also said the sea levels rose higher than they currently are since then and only the tops of the hills were still above water. I'd never heard of a global higher than now sea level, and google just now says the last time that was the case was 130,000 years ago so as I've often found take what guides say with a grain of salt. But other sources do bare out that the island was connected to the mainland 7,000 years ago.
"Aboriginal prisoners contributed to agricultural development of the island" a sign says. Wait what. We all know European prisoners were sent to Australia and did a lot of the manual labor of the early colonies, but "aboriginal prisoners contributed to" sounds a lot like a nice roundabout way of saying "we enslaved the locals." I noticed numerous references to aboriginal prisoners on various informational signs but if there was a source of broad overview information on the island i missed it. But let me quote wikipedia for you:Between 1838 and 1931, Aboriginal prisoners held on Rottnest Island were held in deplorable conditions and subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment. [...] Although slavery, as legally defined, never existed in Western Australia, the "assignment" system effectively implemented a system of forced labour, and was condemned by Reverend J. B. Gribble and the Anti-Slavery Society. Aboriginal people who refused assignment were sent to Rottnest Island to be "civilised", and were used in chain-gangs to perform hard labour including farming, quarrying, and collecting salt.[35] Most of the island's historic Settlement - including Government House (Hotel Rottnest), the church, Salt Store, museum, gift shop, original waterfront cottages and The Quod - was built by forced Aboriginal prison labour working under extremely harsh conditions.[36]
Apparently 3600 aboriginals came through the island.
Exploring the island by bike seems immensely popular, with mass bikes coming over on the ferry and bicyclists all over the island. Also there's a bus that goes around clockwise, $25 per person for an all day pass. It occurs to me just now i should try to describe the size of the island but as I've discussed with my friends none of us has a very good sense for measurements of surface area. It's 19 square kilometers, which is 1900 hectares, or 4695 acres or 7.3 square miles. Perhaps the important fact is it takes the bus an hour to circle the island.
The island is hilly, and covered with variously low shrubby trees or heathy bushes, and crisscrossed with trails. We proceeded about a quarter way around the island on the bus and got off by the lighthouse, which is near the center at the highest point. On neighboring hills there's a WWII lookout tower and gunnery observation post. The lighthouse is a nice tall white tower, still in use, a tour was beginning in five minutes but we didn't go on it. Went for a walk back from the tower towards the main settlement where we started. It was pleasant. Found very little tourist traffic away from the bike trails, in fact I'm not sure we saw anyone else on foot in several kilometers of walking. Saw some more quokkas but i think they're definitely concentrated by main settlement. Walked past some salty ponds where they used to make the aboriginals mine salt.
Got back on the bus and this time rode it all the way around the island. While at the far end of Rottnest Island we were 15,104 km (9,385 miles) from my parents home address in Southern California. This is certainly the farthest from home they've ever been. This is further than even my travels in Uganda, Ethiopia and Nairobi, though Zanzibar was 16,145 km (10,032 miles). (If you're curious, the furthest you can get from Los Angeles is the French island of Reunion, 18,501 km (11,496 miles) from my parents home address). Incidentally, my dad having grown up in Rochester New York, this is very very close to the furthest land from there in the world he could possibly reach. The exact furthest point is 100km from where we are now. For any other Americans from the east coast who want to go as far from home as possible, Cape Leeuwin in West Australia is it.
Then we returned to the main settlement and dad went for a brief swim at a nearby beach. Then to the ferry landing and left via a 4pm ferry. If you wanted to stay on the island there's plenty of holiday cottages, though i don't know how much they are.
Walked back to our hotel. Either people are very friendly in this area and I'm too cynical, or lots of people are on drugs because once walking to the dock in the morning and twice walking back wild feral looking people greeted us in a friendly forthright manner like they knew us, to which i responded with a somewhat brusque "how's goin" as i steamed past careful not to get drawn into a conversation.
The hotel restaurant was open and we went in there for dinner, which was actually extremely good (traditional pub fare w a bit of an Irish leaning as it was an "Irish pub"). There was an Asian woman who appeared to be on drugs dancing by herself by what looked like an ATM for placing bets on the races on the TVs. Eventually she left but was replaced by several similarly disreputable looking guys hovering around the machine as if it was a warm fireplace in a frozen winter.