Fremantle and Rottnest Island

Photos

The seas have so far stayed fairly calm. I believe the last the captain said was 2-4 feet. It is pretty calm. So far, so good.

We were both up around 3-4 am and went out on the balcony as the skies have been so cloudless lately. We finally saw the Southern Cross. We woke to the sun already up as we sailed past Rottnest Island with a huge full moon over it. We arrived on time in Fremantle as we were having breakfast. Today was a turnover day, the end of the 2nd WC segment and beginning of the 3rd. That means a lot of people were leaving and new ones arriving. The cruise director changed today. Gary Hunter left and Rick Spath (from the NWP16 cruise) arrived. We were in either Marketplace, walking across the pool deck or waiting for our cabin to be serviced while sitting in Palm Court this morning without hearing any public announcements about the ship clearing. We only heard the bio-security warning about food while we ate breakfast and before we docked. We watched from Palm Court as people left. I guess they just found the gangway and waited. Crystal gave us little yellow cards that had In-Transit Guest printed on it and we had to show them to leave and reboard Serenity today. The laundry rooms were all closed for 24 hours today for routine maintenance.

We were docked at least 2 blocks further up river than we were in 2017 on Oceania. It was a slight inconvenience as it made for longer walks to and from the ferry dock at Shed B. The port had a brass band playing at the end of the gangway to greet us ashore. I don't remember that before.

We went to Rottnest Island on our own today. This was our 3rd visit to Fremantle but the 1st time to Rottnest Island. A local we met on our last visit highly recommended a day trip by return ferry. The ferry ride is the reason we hadn't done it in the past. The ferry ride was pretty bad and it lasts close to 30 minutes. There are 2 ferries. For some reason we picked Rottnest Express though Captain Cook Cruises/SeaLink seemed to be running at about the same time and frequency and size of vessel. Clay says we paid $92.50 USD for roundtrip ferry tickets. We bought them online and had to print and present them to board. I don't know what the other ferry charged, but I assume about the same. Based on our docked time we booked to go over at 9:30 am and return at 3:30pm. That worked out great.

Beyond the recommendation to visit Rottnest, we had another motivator. We met our 1st quokka at Adelaide Zoo's petting area last visit in 2017 and learned that they live on Rottnest. It went on the to do list. We had found online a couple of free daily volunteer guided quokka walks and planned to do that. The 1st walk was at 10 am called "meet the quokka". Our ferry was delayed departing and we were at the meeting point at 10:07 am. It didn't matter as this wasn't really a walk. A couple of quokkas were right there and they live there full time. It was a mother with a 5-month old child. They were active all day as far as we could see in their very busy little tree-shaded corner. So that worked out. We thought it would take more time. We thought we'd wander shops and have a good lunch before the 2:30 pm quokka walk. It turned out there were only 2 shops, loads more active quokkas in the mall area and we had a pizza for lunch. That left a big bunch of free time. So we bought Island Explorer HOHO bus tickets and rode a full circuit in an hour. We were charged the concessionaires price of $15 AUD each. If we'd known about the fur seals and dolphins you could view from the west end, we'd have allowed more time for it and probably skipped the 2:30pm walk.

We were on the 3:30 pm ferry back to Fremantle. It was a different and smaller boat than the morning. We had to sit outside under cover and face backwards. Both rides were unpleasant, this one was worse. We were back onboard before 4:30pm and all aboard was 5pm. Clay raced around and got this segment's reservations and our Magic Castle tickets. We had dinner reservations at Prego at 6pm. Serenity held a muster drill for new embarkees at 5:15pm. We did not hear any sailing announcement from the captain around 6pm. Prego is our next to least favorite specialty restaurant. Churrascaria is worst. I refuse to go back. Prego got rid of one of Clay's favorite dishes, fritto misto. They also got rid of Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio for a PG from NSW Australia that was not good.

I apologize for the delay in posting, we lost Internet for a period yesterday and I lost a few paragraphs of text. We are off to a fairly good smooth sailing start to our seven day sail across the Indian Ocean to the east coast of Africa.

Photos