Canal Rocks, South Western Australia

Canal Rocks bridge

Canal Rocks channel

Shell hunting 1

Shell hunting 2

Rock hopping 1

Rock hopping 2

Rock hopping 3

Victor Harbour Island, South Australia

Victor Harbour Island, South Australia, side view

Rottnest Island, Western Australia

Rottnest Island West End bay

Rottnest Little Parakeet Bay

Rottnest travel

Rottnest West End

Rottnest Underwater Explorer

Fishees!

Old ship wreck

South-Western Australia is bordered by ruggedly beautiful coastline.

The first island in this little chain is reached by a wooden bridge.

But thereafter you have to swim. The uncannily straight channel through the islands visible ahead runs for about 150 m and was cut by a glacier.

If you make it to the furthest island, you can hunt for shells on the tiny beach!

Then you just have to get back, carefully ...

Covered in fairy penguin burrows, this island and the surrounding bay are also the playground of Adelaide’s residents, two hours to the North. Unlucky Clydsedale horses walk along the plastic strip, pulling two-storey tourist carriages across the bridge.

Half an hour by ferry from Perth, Rottnest Island is the best daytrip holiday destination. 18 km long but narrow, the large coastline is comprised of countless bays, in which yachts from Perth like to anchor. There are only two small settlements on the island and the rest is left to the quokkas, the slow-moving minature kangaroos after which the island was named by the early Dutch explorers, who mistook them for some type of giant rat (‘Ratnest’ in Dutch). They’re very cute and love drinks of water. Feeding is not good for them. For more stunning pics of Rottnest see 'Australian Postcards.'

Surrounded by reefs and shipwrecks, Rottnest is home to the best diving and snorkelling in Perth.

Cars are banned from the island :) leaving the ever-present bicycles and, for the lazy, buses to the beaches.

In the mid 1990s, a Japanese tanker that thought it was 200 km elsewhere ran aground on this shelf one night. Nothing remains now, but other wrecks, some very old, litter the reefs in deeper water and provide awesome diving.

For those to lazy too dive, the Underwater Explorer ‘drives’ you over the reefs.