Rotto and Footy

This past weekend was like a mini vacation, without even having to get on a plane, or bus for that matter! I spent Saturday and most of Sunday at Rottnest Island (Rotto) with about 10 other people from Student Village and then headed back to Perth a little early for the opening game of the AFL season on Sunday.
Rottnest Island is just off the coast and is a quick 30 minute ferry ride away. When it's clear out you can still see the Perth skyline.

View of Perth from Rotto

No one is allowed to bring their cars on the island, leaving the roads open to pedestrians and cyclists. The tour around the island is 29 km, and is full of hills! It was pretty windy on Saturday when we did the tour of the island, but the views of the ocean made it worthwhile.

Bike paths to rival Madison's

Views of the island were plentiful and breaks every few hundred meters became routine. Although it looks like an awful day weather wise, it was cool enough to ride our bikes without getting too hot and I didn't have to worry (so much) about getting a sunburn! All good things!

Rotto by bike

We stumbled onto a couple of great beaches and snorkel sites throughout the day. Our first one was Parker's Bay? We didn't really check the map to find anything that day, we kind of just kept biking and stopped when something caught our attention. The first place had some pretty legit waves crashing offshore, but there was a more secluded bay area that worked for snorkeling. Lots of fish, pretty good coral reef area, but intense currents that made snorkeling without fins not as enjoyable.

snorkeling with the fishes, against the waves

We then biked over to another area of the island and found another place to snorkel. This was a really fun site-the rocks and reef started really close to shore and was really shallow for a while. It couldn't have been more than a foot deep for the first stretch of it, and then you would suddenly stumble onto an open area that was about 10 feet deep, and with tons of little crevices in the rocks where the fish would hide. This fish here were a lot bigger and stuck to those deeper pockets. It was fun to dive down and see what was hiding under the rocks.

But the water has gotten pretty cold now that summer is basically over and fall has begun. So the rest of the afternoon and early evening was spent biking. And searching for quokkas! Quokkas, to the locals, probably just look like big rats. But we all found them adorable. They have mainland counterparts called quendas that are all over Student Village, and because there is a forested area right behind my bedroom window I can hear them all scurrying around at night. But quokkas are only found on Rotto and are a lot bigger. We had heaps of fun searching them out and making some new friends.

making friends with quokkas is a 3 step process

Saturday night was dinner and then back to the cabin. It was an exhausting day, and the only way to reward ourselves was with an amazing dinner. I had chocolate pancakes with Macadamia Nut ice cream, and some muffins for dessert. It was absolutely delicious.

Our cabin was supposed to hold 6 people, but we're cheap and squeezed 11 people in. It had a mini-kitchen with a frig, stove, and some cutlery and we had our own shower and bathroom.

We got up early Sunday morning to check out of the room and then head back down to Little Salmon Bay for some more snorkeling. This site has a snorkel trail, and was a great find. Oh yeah, the sun had come out!

the water finally looks inviting

This was a great coral reef, a lot bigger than the other two sites, and had tons of neat fish, both small and large. It was fun to follow the underwater signs and have more of a structure to the dive. The water was still cold, but we all warmed up much faster on the beach today than yesterday!

I left Rotto in the early afternoon so I could get back into Perth for the first footy game of the season. The Freo Dockers were playing the Adelaide Crows, and the Crows were supposed to win. But guess what?? Freo won! It was a great game! I could give you my interpretation of what I saw, but instead check out this article in today's paper, written by someone who actually knows the rules of the game.

But what I do know of footy is that it is a lot more fast paced than football and just overall a lot more fun to watch and be a part of. The rules aren't too complicated and even if you don't fully understand them you can still follow what's going on in the game. For a better explanation, check out wikipedia.

A lot of my photos didn't turn out great-either too sunny or too dark, or the players were just moving too fast and became blurs on my screen. But here are some from the night-hopefully you now have an idea of what footy is all about!

pictures from Rotto here and pictures from footy here.

Ningaloo Reef

where I swam with the creatures of the deep,

saw coral reefs and anemone beds,

and heaps of fish.

All photos can be found here.

Northwest Trip

This last week was the first of my non-teaching weeks and I headed with a group of about 40 other international students up the coast of Western Australia and then east and into the outback. I made up a map of the places we stopped so you can follow along! We covered a total of 2400 miles in 10 days, and although it felt like we must have covered all of WA, we only scratched the surface.

Friday, March 5: 581 kms-Murdoch Uni to Northampton

We began the trip with day full of driving! Our buses held about 15 people and we had 3 buses in total. By the end of that trip we all had a love-hate relationship with them. The "air-conditioning" was tested in the heat of the outback and one of the buses broke down a few times during the first few days, leaving the other two buses packed with extra students. But after being in a bus with 15 other people for 2400 miles, you really got to know the other students on the trip.

We traveled through the wheat and sheep farming areas just north of Perth, stopping in Geraldton for lunch, and arriving at Northampton by dinner time. We stayed at the Northbrook Farmstay which is a llama farm for the night and got our first taste of what the country out here looks like.

Saturday, March 6: 370 kms-Northampton to Hamelin Pool
We soon learned that early mornings meant up by 6 am and tents packed and on the road by 7 am. But getting on the road this early allowed time to stop and check out the scenery. While we were driving up the coast we couldn't always see it from the buses, but we were never more than a kilometer away from the water. We stopped here for a little while to check out the views that were just beyond our reach from the buses.

We got back on the road and headed to the Murchison River Gorge in Kalbarri National Park for some more amazing views. The landscape changed so quickly sometimes and you would have never guessed from the buses that we were anywhere near someplace like this.

We eventually got to Hamelin Pool, where we stayed for the next 2 nights. Just a quick walk down from camp was the beach, and the stromatolites! The stromatolites are like old, living fossils and are the cyanobacteria that were responsible for the first inputs of oxygen into the atmosphere. Needless to say, I couldn't wait to get out there and check them out, and at sunset no less.

Sunday, March 7: 278 kms-Monkey Mia

We had to be up and heading out to Monkey Mia, about an hour and half drive from Hamelin Pool, in order to see the dolphins that morning. There are a few families of dolphins that come into shore every morning to feed. We were able to stand right at the edge of the water as they came into shore and waited for their fish.

After Monkey Mia, we headed down to another beach for the afternoon in the town of Denham. We then headed to Shark Bay to see, well of course, the sharks. We all thought that we might be lucky enough to see a few sharks, and were shocked when there were sharks everywhere just swimming around in the bay.

After Shark Bay, we drove down to Shell Beach for a quick visit.

We stayed another night at Hamelin Pool before departing for Ningaloo Reef the next morning.

Monday, March 8: 437 kms-Hamelin Pool to Coral Bay

We drove almost all day in order to get to Coral Bay by dinner time. It was a hot day, and one of the buses broke down on the way up there. Once again, we had to cram extra people into the already full and hot bus. By the time we got to the caravan park that night we were all ready for a sunset swim.

Bayview Caravan Park has restaurants, cafes, hotels, and is right on the beach-just what we all needed after this day! We headed down for a swim and I brought my mask and snorkel. What we didn't realize until we were all into the water was how many sting rays there were! I saw a few while snorkeling, and then some again when we decided we should probably get out of the water. Some of us walked up the beach a bit and found a safer spot to watch the last few minutes of the sunset. But being in the water for sunset was well worth it! The bay was so salty that you could very easily tread water, and then just float on your back with your feet facing west and watch the sun set. An amazing night, and a great foreshadow of what was to come the next day!

Tuesday, March 9: Ningaloo Reef

As soon as I get photos from this day, I'll make a separate post-it was just that great! I went on a 5 hour long snorkel tour. Here is a preview of what we saw just from the boat.

There were 3 snorkels total, and the last two included swimming with a manta ray and reef sharks!

Wednesday, March 10: 592 kms-Coral Bay to Karijini National Park

We finally started to drive eastward and into the outback on Wednesday! We didn't pass too much on the way out there-the first sign of just how vast the outback is, as well as the rest of WA. We stopped at Tom Price for lunch and to do some grocery shopping before getting to Karijini National Park at sunset.

This area is part of the Hamersely Range, which is 3 billion years old and is one of the oldest mountain ranges. The landscape went from a coral reef to flat and dry, to foothills all in one day.

Thursday, March 11: Karijini National Park

We stayed the entire day in Karijini and did some hiking. We hiked about 1 mile to get to the gorge where we saw the first place we would go swimming.

The views were incredible from here, and only got better as we hiked down into the gorge and to our first destination: Circular Pool.

There was a small waterfall on the far edge, just over the rock ledge you could climb up to and jump off of. The water was cool and fresh-no salt water here! Which was surprisingly really nice after almost all the water we had been in (including showers!) had been salt water.

After we left this swimming area our guides informed us a brown king snake had been lurking around. Not to worry though, they had it under control, or so they tried to convince us. This is the 3rd deadliest snake in the world, and it escaped their make shift pen while we were all swimming. But they got it penned back somehow and none of us ever saw it.

We did all see, however, the Pilbarra Olive Python as we were hiking to our next destination. Again, not to worry as this snake isn't poisonous-it will just give you a "death hug." Right-no worries.

We kept on hiking and eventually got to Fortesque Falls without encountering any more of the infamous Australian fauna. Fortesque Falls was more of a legitimate waterfall than the last place and had a larger swimming area as well.

We hike up and out of the gorge to go back to the campsite before lunch, and then headed to the (air-conditioned) visitor's center to get out of the intense heat-about 115 F. Once things cooled back down by mid-afternoon we hiked back down into the gorge and went to Fern Pool-a sacred site to the Aborigines as the serpent that created these lands still lives here.

We got a little bit of rain while we were swimming and once it cleared we hiked back to Fortesque Falls to check out the rainbow.

Friday, March 12: 312 kms-Karijini to Newman

We only drove a couple hours to get to Newman, which was the first sign of civilization we had seen in a while-did I mention there was no running water at Karijini? Made for some interesting late night bathroom runs......

Newman is a mining town and is one of the first and biggest in all of Australia. You either work in the mines or in one of the stores in town (which could be Subway!). We stopped at the visitors center and saw all the mining equipment, which we had also seen on the highway driving up there. When the trucks passed us we had to pull off the road and they took up the width of both lanes with the mining gear. Absolutely huge, and they are gearing up for another mining boom. The vast majority of iron ore, what they mine in Newman, goes off to China, which has actually been in the news lately.

The caravan park at Newman had running water-flush toilets and showers! It even had a swimming pool! It might as well have been a five start resort. We all cooled off, freshened up, and enjoyed the lazy afternoon in Newman.

Saturday, March 13: 699 kms-Newman to Mt. Magnet

Another long day of driving took us thorugh Meekathara for lunch and eventually to Mt. Magnet where we stayed for the night at the Wogarno Sheep Station. Yep, we stayed on a sheep farm because there was no where else to stay between Newman and Perth-no caravan parks, no motels. Just a sheep farm.

We were able to check out one end of the 120,000 acre farm to catch one last sunset. Great views of the country, even though the sunset wasn't.

Most of us ended up sleeping outside, sans tents, that night as the barn smelled of sheep and had no breeze coming through it. So next to the sheep we slept, and were rest assured snakes would not be a problem as a professional snake catcher had been out last week. It was a cloudy night and we couldn't see any stars, but it felt great to get some fresh air on the last night.

Sunday, March 14: 618 kms-Mt. Magnet to Perth

Home. Civilization. No more snakes! We all agreed to get up at 5 am and head out by 6 am, getting us into Perth at about 2 pm Sunday afternoon. It was weird to be on a two plus lane highway, with other cars, and back in civilizaiton.

It was a great trip and an amazing look at Western Australia. Although the pre-planned activities and lack of freedom at points got to be a little frustrating, it was all worth it to see the things we saw over those 10 days. Now I'm even more excited to travel New Zealand on my own terms...in three weeks!