The Indian Ocean’s laid-back ‘paradise on Earth’
On a recent visit to Perth, I mentioned to a local that I was heading to Rottnest Island the next day. She sighed wistfully. “I love it there,” she said. “You’re going to love it too. It has a special kind of magic – the kind of place where you kick off your shoes the minute you arrive. Everything slows down and you can breathe a little more deeply.”
I already felt that Perth was a little like that – at least, life there felt slower and less frenzied than in my hometown of Melbourne on Australia’s east coast – but I smiled back, not really knowing what she meant.
However, she was right. Rottnest Island, a peaceful 19-sq-km isle off the coast of Western Australia, is, in fact, magical. The spell was cast as soon as our ferry left the mainland, skimming over the Indian Ocean. Humpback whales breached nearby, sending jets of sea spray into the air and flipping their tails as if in welcome. The sky was clear with the promise of a perfect day to come.
Just 19km and 30 minutes later, I stepped off the ferry into another world. Rottnest Island has been famously car-free since 1931, and those more in the know than me immediately jumped onto bikes they’d brought with them or wandered off to hire one from Pedal and Flipper, said to be the largest bike hire place in the southern hemisphere.
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