TASHY TRAVELS

Every Sunday, I am going to upload a post about the different countries I have visited and/or lived in since 2002.

I can assure you of some interesting stories.

AUSTRALIA 2 - PART SIX

What did you do when your years of schooling were over, you’d sat your last exam and freedom beckoned. Me? I had two weeks holiday and started my working career as an actuarial student at an assurance company in the city of London. But, in and around the Perth area, young people have a far better idea. They book themselves a week on Rottnest Island, or at least they did in 2004, about 20 kilometres off the coast. There was a camp-site, their parents were across the water and they could enjoy that freedom. Having missed out, I accidentally decided to join them. I say accidentally, because we had been offered a trip across to Rottnest some time before, but the only date we could fit in coincided with the end of the school year.

A ferry service runs from Fremantle to the island, which has had a succession of different uses. Artefacts have been found, which would suggest that the Aboriginals lived there before it was split from the mainland by the ending of the last ice age. Since then, it has been a prison, the Governor’s holiday retreat, a military training camp and, since 1985, more of a holiday resort. The island is 11 kilometres long and, at its widest, 4.5 kilometres wide. There are no cars on the island so everyone takes their bikes or hires one when they get there. Of course, you could decide to walk around the island if you wanted.

I’ll show you some pictures around the island while I give you a brief, thoroughly interesting, history lesson. You may know that, until the beginning of the 17th century, there had been no official sighting of Australia. For at least 40,000 years the Aboriginal people had made it their home, but it wasn’t until 1606 that a European explorer, William Jansz, first sighted the coast. Around that time the Dutch, and a few other nations, were trading with the people of the Spice Islands, now known as Indonesia. The Dutch ships sailed south from Europe, turned left around the bottom of South Africa and then made their way across the Indian Ocean before turning north and reaching the Spice Islands. Sailing ships depend on the wind and early mariners discovered the best winds in the Indian Ocean were the Roaring Forties which blew them rapidly west before a quick left turn took them north. However, navigation in those days was a bit hit and miss. In fact, miss was the lucky one because hit usually meant you missed the correct turning point and hit a reef and lost your ship. If you did fail to turn, and missed the reefs, then you would actually hit the west coast of Australia. Remember the Batavia.

Until about 6,500 years ago, Rottnest was joined to the mainland. Then the ice age finished, water levels rose, and for a while Rottnest was 12 very small islands. Water levels then sank a bit and it became the size it is today. In 1696, a guy called Willem de Vlamingh anchored his boat about 2 kilometres off the island. It would seem, from what he wrote, there were no people there but he commented about the fragrant smell on the island. De Vlamingh was at the time conducting a survey of the south-west coast of Australia, although, at this time, no-one knew it had an east coast. He reported that what he had seen of Australia made it a ‘wild and barren country’ and he had found nothing of importance.

How wrong can you be? He made another mistake when he named Rottnest Island, in Dutch, after the number of rats he had spotted there. They weren’t rats at all; they were quokkas, part of the kangaroo family of marsupials. From a distance they may look a bit like rats I suppose, but when they move quickly they have a closer resemblance to a kangaroo. Then again Willem, bless his little cotton socks, hadn’t seen a kangaroo either it would appear. He may well have been partly responsible for the fact that the Dutch never decided to settle in Australia and, if he was, he probably influenced world history in a fairly big way.

The English, however, arrived in Western Australia in 1829. The island was offered to some settlers for pastoral, fishing and salt gathering and in 1838 it became an Aboriginal prison. This lasted until 1903. Over that time there were 3,700 prisoners, 340 of whom died of natural causes on the island and 6 were hung. They did much of the work, building many of the houses, roads and the sea wall. They were given Sundays out of custody, when many of them went Quokka hunting. This actually contributed to one of the worst disasters on the island in 1855. Quokkas are nocturnal, and in order to catch them during the day, the prisoners had to smoke them out. One such fire got out of hand and eventually consumed most of the island. In 1903 the island started to be used for recreational purposes by the general public.

Nowadays the island is a tourist resort. Ferries leave the mainland on a regular basis each day and during any one year there are about half a million visitors to the island. Because it is rated as a class A reserve, no-one can buy accommodation or land there and the only people who live there are those who supply a service to the island that extends outside of the ferry times. In other words, anyone who works there and has to start work before about 8.00am or finishes after 6.00pm in summer or about 4.00pm in winter. There are 170 people who actually live there and a school with just 17 pupils.

We stayed on the camp-site, the only camp-site on the island. The other accommodation is the Hotel, the Lodge and countless units and cottages, which can be rented daily or weekly. To give you some idea of the popularity of the island, at certain times of the year there is a ballot held for accommodation. You don’t book, you give your name and, if you win, you get to stay there. The camp-site is busiest probably at the end of November each year when those high school students from the mainland, unleashed from the pressures of final exams, descend there to party and enjoy life. We certainly met some, although I declined their kind offer of having a drink down a hosepipe. The ones we saw were noisy not annoying, loud not disruptive and seemed to be having their definition of a good time. Personally, these days I like to know who, and where, I am each morning when I wake up but maybe that is old age. In other ways they proved life hasn’t changed in 40 or so years.

I guess the photos accompanying the previous paragraphs have given a pretty good idea of how beautiful and idyllic Rottnest is. You land, luckily, on the jetty and behind that was the shopping centre called, with some imagination, The Mall. There were five main shops there. A bakery that is the most popular place every morning for that quick breakfast snack. Then there is a general store, a Red Rooster Takeaway, a sports clothing store and a beauty/massage and tanning place. A little distance away there was also a gift shop.

There are no private vehicles on Rottnest and so the only way you can get around is by bike, bus or walk. We took an organised bus tour and saw some of the salt lakes. Ten per cent of the island is salt lake and the lakes are about 4 times saltier than the sea in winter but in summer, when its dryer, about 7 times. We saw the Chapel and the Church, where the public can ring the bells, albeit using a keyboard, learned that the island has its own wind-turbine and de-salination plant and were told that the circle-like patterns in the sea were polygon reefs. They are formed when shoals of fish feed off the coral underneath. It would seem that they eat in a regular pattern leaving a supply of coral in the middle. Other fish then replace these ones but still follow the same pattern. In the middle of the island is Lake Baghdad and, just like the real thing, looking across at it from a distance is a really thick bush.

On the exposed part of the island, all the trees are leaning away from the wind but, even more strange, is that on one side they seem dead, but green on the other side. Each individual tree looks like this. We were told it was the wind that caused this. It brings salt with it when it blows and the effect is known as salt kill. One side of the tree gets peppered with salt, you want intellectual humour with your facts then watch QI, and dies, while the other side lives. The wind also has an effect on the rocks and, on our bus tour, the driver pointed out this dog sitting on the edge of the rock. Except it wasn’t a dog at all, it was the way that the wind had weathered the rocks

After that, we decided that we wanted to look around the island in a more leisurely, less structured way so we went to the bike hire shop. They offered a wide selection of bikes. You could have mountain bikes, sport bikes, a little trailer for the kids, a bike carriage for the whole family and even a mini bike. They were all there as you can see. I can honestly say I have never seen so many bikes under one roof. There was also a workshop where repairs were being undertaken but a thought struck me. We were there at the busiest time of the year for Rottnest; what on earth did they do with all these bikes at other times? It was a bit like the European Butter Mountain of the late eighties. Maybe the bike hirers gave the surplus to old age pensioners in the winter too.

We had to make a choice but luckily we were told we could have a bike for two days and we decided to try two different types. On day one we took a tandem. First confession, I have never ridden a tandem before. The first discovery I made, as I placed my seat on that provided by the bike manufacturer, was that, unless you were in pretty good sync with the person behind you, there was quite a bit of wobble. Of the bike. This was a stability thing and nothing to do with parts of my anatomy. I have always tended to lean into a corner, even when driving my head will go to one side; others don’t.

The second discovery was both disconcerting and, sometimes, a little pleasurable. We had a faulty tandem. A tandem has two wheels, two sets of pedals, two saddles and two sets of handlebars. Both wheels go round, both riders use pedals, both seats can be occupied but I thought only one set of handlebars would move. Wrong. My girlfriend, sitting behind me, found out that her handlebars moved too. They weren’t connected to any wheel, she couldn’t influence the way we went but she could make my life more fun. You see her handlebars were connected to my saddle. She turned left and my bum went right. She turned right and I went left. You can see this clearly from the photo. So, there I was, coping with the aforementioned balance anomaly and now I found I was, cheekily shall we say, gyrating in my seat.

The next day, you can have too much of a good thing you know, we went out on an ordinary bike and cycled along the old railway line and into other areas. It was very peaceful with hardly a sound except the odd tinkle of a bell as a cyclist went past and greeted you. Mine actually tinkled, if I can say that, every time I went over a bump and there are quite a few of them.

Then, as we were coming home, I almost tinkled myself. You see all this ‘no cars’ thing makes people complacent. They don’t think they could get run over or have an accident. I think you know by now that I quite like speed so as we came home I cycled on ahead, in fact I very nearly did. Cycle on a head that is. I sped over a hill, charged down the other side, swept round a corner and there, coming out of a side-track, was an elderly lady on her bike. I had two choices, hospital for both or think quickly. I knew my bike only had a working front brake and if I pulled that on hard I was heading for an orbital journey and not round the M25 or the Périphérique. So I swerved round the back of her, on the basis that if I went in front she was moving that way, and slowly came to a halt down the road. I looked back, ready to apologise, but she had just pressed on, totally unmoved. Oh to be old and unobservant.

Another important aspect of life on Rottnest is the wild life. This chap came across to see us on the bike ride but we also passed two osprey nests on our bus tour. These large birds, it says and there are about 20 around the island, make a very big and elaborate nest out on a rock somewhere. The nests are used in future years too. We were told that the ones we saw were estimated at around 70 years old. We later saw one flying, the osprey not the nest – they can’t fly can they, don’t be stupid, above the sea waiting to swoop and catch something for dinner. Then our guide told us that they sometimes have cases of the birds drowning. Apparently, they swoop down and try to pick up something too big and their claws function in such a way that having locked on to their prey, they can’t release it until they land and the talons open. So, if they grab too large a fish, the weight will just drag them back down to the water and they will drown. I never ever thought of it. A large bird drowning.

Let’s close this piece by taking a closer look at the little marsupials who, inadvertently, gave the island its name; the Quokka. I don’t really think they look too much like rats although I suppose, from a distance, and if you have spent a long time on board ships, well-known for being rat infested, perhaps. They are actually pretty cute. We saw these two during the day but they are, essentially, nocturnal. The authorities on the island forbid visitors to feed them as they don’t; want them to get aggressive, the Quookas not the visitors, about food like seagulls can.

The first night we were amazed as there were hundreds of them around the camp-site. They were everywhere. Some, especially the young ones, seemed a bit shy but most were just sitting there waiting. Ready to be run over by the numerous bikes. Sorry, joking. No quokkas were hurt in the writing of this blog. They are most sociable and quite happy to pay you a visit, especially if you’re out. This happened to the 18 year olds, our partying neighbours, who, when they came back to their tent, discovered they had sponsored a little feast for quokkas out of their chocolate and rice cracker storage. They were not too pleased, the quokkas however were ecstatic and one really, really didn’t want to leave the tent. It had gained such affection for the place it was trying to get back three times.

It was actually fun to watch and this one found a plastic cup that our neighbours had finished with, presumably having run out of hose-pipes. Everyone who was staying overnight on the island had a little encounter with a quokka, whether they wanted to or not. There were about 10,000 on the island and they live for ten years. The females give birth to one each year with a gestation period of 27 days. Then the baby remains in the pouch for a while. Most live on the east end of the island because that is where they have fresh water. There used to be quokkas on the mainland but they had predators, such as foxes and rabbits who also ate their food supply. This little chap must have been celebrating a birth in the family I think.

I leave you with two Rottnest sunrises.

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