A Dutch explorer stumbled upon a beautiful little island in front of Fremantle in 1696, and called it “rat’s nest”, because he thought it was full of giant rats. Except, they were not rats. But the name stuck.

We took a short ferry ride there from Hillarys (where you can leave the car for free, yay). We also rented bikes, since that is the best way of transportation on the small island. We went around the whole thing and it was about 22km.

We went there mainly because of the “rats” that are actually tiny marsupials, quokkas. We didn’t see them at all during our bike ride. But we did see perfect turquoise water and beautiful little bays. There were also some ship wrecks right in front of the beach, begging to be explored with snorkels. We also saw several lizards and even some sea lions on a rock just in front of the island’s west end.

We had decided to take a free little guided Quokka walk, so we came back to the Settlement to grab some snacks. And right there were the quokkas, exploring and sniffing who has the best food. They are the only land mammal, so they didn’t seem to be particularly afraid of anything. They’re also herbivores and eat mainly grass and local tea tree, but one of them seemed pretty interested in our mandarins and almost took a leap on them on the bench.

On the guided walk we finally saw them in natural environment, eating natural food. And there were lots of them. Their poo was also omnipresent. Apparently they also really appreciated the golf course that was built near by, with lots of yummy green grass.