Fremantle and Rottnest Island...

Fremantle is the party town of Western Australia. Considered the seaport of Perth and the cities gateway to the world, this very charming town won us over immediately. It was good to be back in 'civilisation'. :)

The must-dos in Fremantle are a visit to the prison, having a coffee on the famous Cappuccino strip, walk around the markets or enjoy fish 'n chips at one of the many restaurants and stalls in the fishing port.

The jail was infamous and notorious even back in Britain in the mid-1800s. Many prisoners in the UK were afraid of being send to the 'establishment' because it meant that most likely they would ever see their families and country again. Many Fenians (Irish men who took an oath to free Eire from English rule in the 1860s) were sent there. We were told a story which seems to have been 'forgotten' by English history books and almost sparked a war between the United Kingdom and the United States: the story about the rescue and the escape of 6 Fenians from Fremantle jail to the USA in the 1870s. Google it! Soon, we were told, Hollywood will make a film about the story.

We were also told that the term Pome (this is what Ozzies like to call the English) has become to be imployed in a not wrong way. POME stands for Prisoner of Mother England and referred to the convicts that were banished to Australia.

Anyway, we decided it was time again for some exercise. So we took the ferry to Rottnest Island and hired bikes to ride around the place. One whole tour around the island is 26km. And the views and beaches were stunningly beautiful. The island was named by the Dutch who landed there in the 17th century and saw an animal hey mistakenly took for a large rat. Because the island was full of them, they named it Rotte Nest (rats' nest). We know now that these animals were not rats but quokkas. They are a small marsupial the size of a domestic cat. And quite funny looking :)

All in all, Fremantle amounts to one of our favourite destinations in Australia. Good on ya, mate!

Geraldton

On our way from Monkey Mia to Geraldton, we spontaneously stopped at Oakabella Homestead, the most haunted (hantee) house in Western Australia. Making our way there over an unpaved road (pst, don't tell the car rental company :)) we saw a 2 meter long dark brown snake as it was crawling across the sand. As we passed it, it raised its head and hissed at us... Upon arrival we were greeted by the keeper of the place, Loretta. She served us tea and scones as well as a very yummy piece of homemade carrot cake. As she asked us about our trip, she would all of a sudden take this weird tone and ask questions that didn't have anything to do with the subject: "can you smell it?" ehm, smell what? "the cigarette smoke..." Ehm, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Politely we said yes, although we couldn't smell a thing. She also asked Christine in a strange voice and with glassy eyes: "Are you in the medical profession?" We enjoyed her stories very much. She said the ghosts called her there and that they were looking after her the same way she was looking after them. It was a very interesting and somewhat spooky experience. But even though we enjoyed her company and her baking very much, we decided we wouldn't want to spend a night there. No point in going and disturbing the ghosts of the little children and the Chinese cook that died there a looooooong time ago...

Heading further south we stopped in Geraldton. To us, this town seemed bery big compared to what we had seen since we left Darwin. It even had a McDonalds :)

The guy that checked us into the backpackers was a bit strange. He had this very noticable French accent, and when he read our passports he asked if we spoke French. So we asked him what region of France he was coming from. And he said: "Ben, Normandie, Bretagne, region Parisienne, quoi." ... Hm, well, a bit strange. We didn't think that someone from Normandie would say he was from Bretagne and even less from Paris. Oh well...what can you do.

We went to look at the Western Australian Museum and at its shipwreck gallery. Quite impressive to think that the Dutch came to the Western Australian Coast almost 200 years before the British, but that they just used it to get some fresh water on their way up to their colony of Batavia, which would now be Jakarta. But many ships sank here, including the one called Batavia and the Zeedijk.

Another famous shipwreck off the coast is that of the HMAS Sydney, which sank after a battle with the German raider Kormoran on 19 November 1941. Both ships sank, everyone one the Sydney died and most on the Kormoran were saved. Both wrecks were only found in 2008. A memorial to the Sydney stands now on a hill overlooking Geraldton and the sea.

It was a nice town, taking us slowly back into 'city-mood' :)

Monkey Mia and its marine life

Another Oasis opening up in front of us after another long day of desert driving was Monkey Mia. The small resort place a few kilometers from Denham in Shark Bay looks like a piece of paradise on earth. White sand, clear water, coral reefs, palm trees and dolphins coming up on the beach to get fed. Christine observed that sometimes they look like torpedoes in the water... :)

The first day we set out to explore Francois Peron Nation Park by a 4WD Jeep tour. A German couple, Nina and Dennis were with us on the tour and as we waited to get picked up, an older Jeep Grand Cherokee pulled up and an oldish man got out. At first Pat thought the man had only brought the car and that our driver/guide would arrive soon. But it soon was clear that he was our guide. He looked somewhat like Fidel Castro and his name was Tim Hargreaves. It turned out he was a well known local character, a councillor, a preacher, a guide, a builder (he built a restaurant out of compressed shells for his wife in Denham), a driver, and a writer...

So we took off and hes asked all of us what we were doing. He was especially happy to tell every Australian we met that Pat was a criminologist and that they should be aware of Pat because they were, in his opinion, all descendents of the convicts brought over from Britain...:) So we had a good laugh. As we left the old sheep station at the entrance of the park, we were driving along peacefully through the sand when all of a sudden a shower of water and green cooling liquid spurted from the engine onto the front window...a hose had broken off the radiator and we couldn't drive any further...hmmmm, that reminded us of course of an older episode from our trip...dear old Manfred breaking down near Goulburn. So we waited for the engine to cool down, had a bit of tea and an apple and tried to make it a bit further in the car. After a few meters, the smell of a hot engine became very strong and we stopped. After Christine helped figure out how the satelite telephone worked, Tim called in for help. That would take at least 3 hours. Along came a very kind and friendly Austrian couple in their 4x4 and they offered to take us to the cape where we could at least look down on all the marine life in the bay and Tim waited with the car.

When we got to the cape and its viewing platforms, we were not disappointed. We could observe sharks, manta rays, shovel nosed rays, giant sea turtles, dolphins, all kind of fish...it was amazing just standing there and watching them glide through the shallow waters. The 3 1/2 hours we had to wait in the end for someone to come and get us passed very quickly and, at the end of the day, we had a great experience and a cool story to tell :). Christine bought one of Tim's books about life in Shark Bay and finds it very entertaining :)

The following morning we were (again) on a wildlife cruise on (again) another catamaran. We managed to see some Dugongs, these sea creatures of a mixture between a dolphin tail and a sealion front. It is believed Dugongs led to the legends about mermaids (Meerjungfrauen), as tehir tails look a lot like them in traditional drawings of mermaids. There were a few dolphins jumping along the boat for a while.

The rest of the day was spend on the beach...hard life...sorry. :)

All in all, Monkey Mia is a place we can highly recommend.