We only had a day & a bit and 1 night left before departing Western Australia, so we headed for what the guidebooks say is the best of Perth – the port ‘city’ of Fremantle and the paradise playground of Rottnest Island.

Fremantle

Only 12 miles from Perth city, Freo is another world – this was the primary destination for us Brits to send our convicts from the 1850s onwards, the harbour was deepened for commercial shipping and it was transformed to a bustling trade centre at the height of the Western Australian Gold Rushes. A quaint place with well preserved Victorian and Edwardian buildings, it rapidly gentrified after hosting the 1987 America’s Cup and is now a bohemian enclave with a thriving arts & culinary scene – pavement cafes and micro breweries abound and the hipster vibe permeates throughout the city. A lovely place and we would definitely recommend skipping Perth in favour of here.

We were pleasantly surprised by how good our relatively cheap (still over budget though, it’s holiday season) hotel The Hougoumont was – right in the centre of town, with gated secure parking, free wine and cheese hour every evening (now that’s civilised!), a Spin studio (no chance), breakfast included, and upgrade to one of their biggest rooms (accessible, although not sure how the hell someone in a wheelchair would open the huge bathroom sliding door!), and provision of a shower room long after we’d checked out so we could freshen up before going to the airport. Highly recommended to anyone visiting Fremantle.

We luckily had time to visit Fremantle Prison – the must-see attraction here and a UNESCO World Heritage site. A very enthusiastic and patient guide Laura, herded a group of 20+ people around the site, pandering to the badly behaved children of a HUGE family, and not pulling any punches with her commentary. She mentioned paedophiles and went into graphic detail when showing the gallows, but had warned that parents may wish to exclude their kids from certain places/narration. An impressive convict-built facility but shocking that it was still in operation, almost unchanged, until 1991. Part of the prison has been converted to a YHA – impressive as that may be, its still a hostel and so not a chance of Princess Deborah staying there.

The nearby Fremantle Markets were really interesting, with the hipster vibe evident throughout. We were late in the day so didn’t have any real opportunity to explore, but the purple wine and a giant Bluey outfit caught our eye – we didn’t purchase either as (1) purple wine is wrong and (2) our grandson Carey loves Blue on the TV but seems a little frightened by her in 3D!

Rottnest Island

Rotto as it’s known is 11 miles from Fremantle, a 30 minute journey by fast ferry and the playground of anyone from Perth with a boat (it appears there are lots) or anyone from Perth with enough spare cash to fork out for the Rottnest Express fast ferry. It also seems to be a holiday destination for those wanting to escape from Perth for a week or two, and reminded Debbie of The Scillies, just not quite as exclusive.

We’d screwed up and underestimated the demand for ferry tickets on 30th December – doh – so by the time we thought to look at it 4 or 5 days out, many of the sailings were already booked and the best we could do was a 10.30 departure and 14.30 return. £50 return each for a 30 minute crossing – wow, expensive but had to be done. 3.5 hours on the island – loads of time surely? Nope, you really do want a full day on Rotto so we’d recommend getting an early morning ferry out and late evening one back, of course only if you’re more organised than we were!

Hiring a bike is a big attraction, and we were surprised that our ferry transported the hire bikes to Rottnest and back again – odd, why not just have a hire station on the island? Anyway, we didn’t have the time or energy so decided to stay local to the ferry jetty. Based on a recommendation from a lady on the ferry we headed for The Basin – a beautiful beach but absolutely heaving – and then on to Longreach Bay which was quieter but full of moored day boats. For the first time in WA, Debbie braved the sea – it’s not tropical! But like much of WA, the sand is white and the sea is blue – paradise just half an hour from the city. And when Perth is sweltering, Rotto tends to be a good 5 degrees cooler, helped by the sea breeze. It really is no wonder that the citizens of Perth flock here whenever possible. And it helps that they can get multi-trip tickets at a much more reasonable price that the £50 each we paid. we shouldn’t moan – we pay much less for the Kingswear-Dartmouth ferry than the tourists do.

Quokkas – tiny marsupials about the size of a domestic cat with a cute smile – are indigenous to a small & specific part of South Western WA and there’s a population of 8,000-12,000 of them on Rottnest Island. We saw just 3 of them! Very cute but a little rat-like, they kept their backs to Steve so Debbie had to creep around in front of them to get a picture. They are nocturnal and quite shy though, and Rotto was absolutely heaving on the day of our visit so they probably just wanted some peace and quiet.

Another recommendation from the lady on the ferry was a Cray Burger from The Lane opposite the bakery. Starving on our way back to the ferry we joined the queue for a $25 (£12.50) Cray Dog – which turned out to be the most delectable take on a lobster roll that either of us had ever eaten. Really, just mouthwateringly good.

So just a brief visit to Rottnest Island – we needed more time but hey ho – and we really liked it. Despite the hordes of people (probably easily escapable by moving further away from the main settlement), and the incessant bloody flies.

So a fabulous whistle stop visit to the better side of Perth before ending our Western Australia road trip. We drove 2717 KM and drove for over 41 hours, but only saw the tiniest part of this great state. Debbie would love to return and explore some more, especially Ningaloo Reef in whale shark season. As Perth is only a 3 hour flight from Bali, and we may well get back to Indonesia, never say never.

But for now, a most uncivilised overnight flight NW across Australia awaited us – destination Cairns, Queensland…