Rottnest & Margaret River

With only two weeks before Becs left Australia, we had a lot on our to do list. We had considered road tripping north but were a bit tired of long distances and happy to stay local.

The Fremantle Prison YHA became homebase (and my home and employer for the next two months - read more here). We relaxed the first week, exploring Fremantle, Perth, and laying on the beach as much as possible. Becs was headed home to wintery Minnesota so needed to work on that tan.

Rottnest Island

We planned an overnight trip to Rottnest and met Stefano, an Italian only 1 week into his Australian WHV, who joined us for the adventure. We rented bikes to explore the island, falling more in love with the blue coasts, empty roads, and quokkas.

The quokka is the only mammal native to the island. Part of the marsupial family, these cuties move like a kangaroo but are much smaller and slightly rat-like in appearance. But, they have an adorable smile that makes tourists act ridiculous, laying on the ground to get a great selfie…and yes I did this. It’s very important to not touch the animal or feed them human food, you can see the negative impact tourists have had through the patchiness of adult’s fur.

Margaret River

For our last adventure, we rented a car and headed down to Margaret River. Despite pouring rain, we embraced the area. Busselton had the longest timber piled jetty in the southern hemisphere (Australia likes to give very specific accolades to things) where we saw whales in the distance. Plus the town is home to our new favorite brewery, Rocky Ridge.

Margaret River introduced us to delicious wine and insanely good jams and fudge. Dunsborough had an amazing jalapeño popper and burger deal (again, can sense the food and wine theme with us?) We attempted to go to the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, the lighthouse the book The Light Between Oceans features as it sits at the exact location the Southern Pacific and Indian Oceans meet, and Hamelin Bay, home to an abundance of stingrays, but the raging winds prevented both. Still, an area that captures your heart even with heavy rainfall is clearly pretty special.