Look but don't touch - Rottnest Island

And that's pretty hard sometimes! Rottnest Island is full of wildlife, and most of the animals have no real fear of humans. Specially the local marsupials display an unsettling lack of fear. These cute quokka's make it really hard to not to just pick 'em up and cuddle.

Even though the first Dutchman didn't feel the same, they thought they found an island teeming with enormous rats, hence the name: Rottnest.

Quokka

But it's not just the wildlife that makes Rottnest a really good daytrip, the views are spectacular too. The turquoise and coral blue waters are like nothing we have in Europe. While cycling round the island (a full circuit is about 30km), you go from one spectacular bay to the next. We headed out via the south shore.

Looking towards Perth

Snorkelling is another way to enjoy the landscape, and several bays have special snorkel routes laid out, including under water markers. Very cool idea. But we felt that even though it was a lovely sunny day, the water was just a bit too cold for snorkelling.

One of the amazing bays

Like the rest of Australia, there are many, many birds at Rottsnest. Here, you mostly see ravens, and they aren't shy either! But fortunately they're not  aggressive at all. They're quite likeable actually.

Australian Raven

Another bird that you encounter quite often in south west Australia is a little brown pigeon: the Laughing Dove. We saw them on Rottnest too. It's not endemic to Australia, but was introduced from sub-sahara Africa in the late 1890s and has seemed to settle in nicely. 

Laughing dove

We decided to have lunch at the western end of the island, Cape Vlamingh. Like many tourists do. But it is a nice spot for lunch.

This is where the Indian Ocean really starts, and there's quite a surf. In season you can spot nesting ospreys (we didn't) and passing humpbacks (we did). There's also a nice boardwalk, from which you can reall appreciate the waves and little coves. Under and next to this boardwalk were dozens of King's Skinks. We had seen a few during our ride, but not nearly as many as here.

Kings Skink

Before heading back to the ferry via the island's northern shore, we stopped at Cathedral Rocks to watch the seals. It turns out we did see a few seals from Cape Vlamingh, but we weren't sure at the time. It turns out they were flipper sailing, which means you just see black things bobbing in the waves. Especially from a distance there's no telling these are animals. But watching them from Cathedral Rocks Lookout, where you can watch them from a lot closer, clarified that.

New Zealand fur seals