A retro idyll in WA
Lauren Quaintance enjoys some family time on Rottnest Island. It has long been a popular destination for summer holidays, made better with the addition of a luxury beachside resort.
Iis dusk when Rottnest Island finally reveals its true self. Throngs of day-trippers have already boarded the 6pm fast ferry service to Perth, but a few stragglers are draining their drinks at the beachside pub and plotting a last-minute dash to the wharf.
The bakery that is the beating heart of the island’s village is closed, its shelves emptied of custard- and jam-filled doughnuts, and the black crows that bother visitors by day are cawing plaintively from the boughs of a giant Moreton Bay fig tree.
A few hundred metres away, dozens of quokkas – highly photogenic, round-cheeked marsupials – gather on the shores of a salt lake warmed by the last of the day’s sun.
As the light leaks from a red, hazy sky, families clamber on bikes and trace the now empty cycling paths, parents having given into demands for ‘‘one last ride’’. Tangles of boys chase a footy ball on a soft, creamy beach and the smell of sausage fat frying on barbecues hangs in the air.
Some of the families staying here will have been coming to ‘‘Rotto’’ for decades.
Parents who visited as kids return with their own children to repeat the same summer holiday rituals. In that way the island, 19 kilometres off the coast of Perth, feels like a retro idyll.
There are no cars and, as well as 63 stunning beaches, there is a tiny picture house with two showings a day, a games arcade and an ancient 18-hole mini-putt course.
Children enjoy the kind of freedom they can only imagine in a city.
After cycling around the 11km-long island with his friends, my 9-year-old son says he feels like he is in an episode of Stranger Things – the hit TV show that pays homage to a free-range 1980s childhood.
With a varied history that includes being a World War II military post, an internment camp and, shamefully, an Aboriginal prison, Rottnest was named by the explorer Willem de Vlamingh in the 1600s, who mistook the quokkas for rats and named the island ‘‘Rat’s Nest Island’’ aka Rottnest.
Known by the Indigenous people as Wadjemup, the island has been popular with Western Australian holidaymakers since the 1850s.
It is not hard to see why – the cerulean-streaked
water and limestone reef that surrounds the island makes it perfect for snorkelling and fishing.
More than 400 species of fish and 20 species of coral inhabit this marine conservation zone, and osprey, majestic birds of prey, breed there, building huge nests on ragged, rocky outcrops from sticks, seaweed, rope and bones.
Whales pass the island in winter, long-nosed fur seals loll on the beaches, and bottlenose dolphins feed in the bay.
Until recently the only accommodation consisted of simple, lime-washed bungalows complete with Hills Hoist washing lines, allocated in a ballot run by the Rottnest Island Authority. It is a system that even locals find difficult to navigate and waiting lists are many months long.
Now the upmarket Samphire Rottnest, plus new glamping accommodation, means that travellers from further afield can more easily (and comfortably) stay on Rottnest.
At Samphire, it is all about relaxed beachside luxury. Its 80 rooms are decorated in a muted, beachy style.
An elegant oval pool is surrounded by cabanas with timber roofs that look like the raft that Tom Hanks escaped on in the film, Castaway.
As well as highly-regarded Asian-inspired restaurant Lontara (think eggs benedict on corn fritters with sambal for breakfast or bebek menyatnyat – Balinese spiced coconut duck curry), guests can eat at the over-water Isola Bar e Cibo, which serves superb Med-inspired Italian food.
The resort has been built around a two-storey
Tudor-style house that was constructed using Aboriginal prison labour in the mid1850s as the governor’s summer residence. The limestone building now houses the Samphire Club, an intimate and well-appointed bar and activity room.
At sunset, if the wind has dropped, guests take up front-row seats beachside under fringed umbrellas and strings of twinkling lights beside big cast-iron fire pits. From there, you can just make out the smudged outline of Perth, a miniature metropolis on a long ribbon of skyline.
Next door, the surprisingly tasteful Hotel Rottnest (previously the Quokka Arms), with its sprawling beachfront garden bar, is a magnet for families ordering pizzas and burgers as kids climb trees nearby.
If you want to keep things simple, there is always the bakery with its legendary steak, bacon and cheese pies and those doughnuts. And I recommend a ‘‘cray dog’’, grilled WA crayfish marinated in garlic and olive oil and served with lettuce and jalapeno mayonnaise in a bun, which can be bought take-out from The Lane cafe for A$22 (NZ$24).
The Rottnest General Store is also incredibly wellstocked, catering for campers, boaters and anglers, as well as tourists who can’t resist a quokka beer holder, a quokka oven mitt or a quokka 3-D postcard.
The island’s 10,000 quokkas might well be the island’s star attractions. Native to Rottnest and only found in very small numbers elsewhere, they became internationally famous after tennis star Roger Federer snapped a selfie with a happy-looking quokka in 2017.
A large sign at the wharf instructs day-trippers disgorged from the ferry how to get the perfect #quokkaselfie. But those who spend a few days on Rotto know that its charms run much deeper than a photo opportunity.
It is a place to let yourself slowly unwind, to immerse yourself in nature at its most vivid and to rediscover a golden age of childhood freedom.