Rotto

Okay very belated update.  It is hard to get time on the computer here as I share the computer with 6 other people who thoroughly enjoy spending their time on the internet.  It's hard to squeeze enough time in to sit down and write.  I have some time now waiting for David to cook up the supper tonight (or 'tea'). 

After our lovely time in Esperance we made a looong 8 hour drive to Rockingham (or Perth).  We stopped halfway in a place called Hyden where there is the famous "Wave Rock" a cool thing to see.  We surfed for about 7 minutes and then continued on the journey.  We were about half an hour from our final destination when told that the place we were planning to stay at was not willing to stay open for us.  When we got to Rockingham there was nothing, it was rainy, accommodation that was there was full and it was dark.  After an hour, I remembered the FREE wifi at McDonald's, so we headed there for a late dinner and looked for a place to stay.  Oh, I forgot to mention, my phone died just as we entered Rockingham.  Apparently when roaming in and out it wastes the battery so my almost full battery was dead.  We found a 24 hour hostel in Perth and drove another hour to our final destination where we had a very good night sleep. 

The next morning we met up with Juli and Stephanie went on a major
shopping spree through Perth. It rained so it was a perfect thing to do.  We spent the night at Juli's cafe drinking coffee and eating free cakes.  It is very rare to find a cafe that is open after 7 pm anywhere in the big cities around here.  It was nice to do a past time that I enjoyed doing back home that I have not gotten to do yet here in Australia.  The boys joined us on Friday night where we had an interesting night in the YHA Perth Hostel.

Rottnest was awesome!! We lucked out yet again and had beautiful weather.  We spent the first day setting up tent and relaxing at the beach with a little dip in the ocean.  Very chilly!!  During supper we were surrounded by quokkas (massive rats/tiny kangaroos) only found on Rottnest Island.  They are very cute animals but by people feeding them they have become very tame and dumb....climbing up on our legs and getting in scraps at our feet, not cool.  During the night, when we were playing cards in the boys' tent we heard lots of rummaging around in the tent next to us.  It was very repetative and we soon assumed that it was not the lot of guys staying next to us but a quokka in their tent.  When we went over to investigate we found that not only was there ONE quokka in the tent but FOUR.  Dumb animals, it took us a bit of time to convince them to exit the door rather than trying to jump out from the walls of the tents.


The next day we hired bikes and biked around the whole island stopping here and there at beaches for a quick snorkel....there were little white jellyfish everywhere that I got stung by twice so everytime we saw them that was the end of our snorkelling adventures at that beach. One beach we stopped at we were attacked by cute, hungry, scrounging quokkas.  They were worse than seagulls.  They would try to enter one of our bags, get picked up and nicely thrown a little bit away and they would come straight back...never catching on. It was a good day, I did much better than last time...no walking my bike up the hills this time (probably because I was finally taught how to use gears on a mountain bike properly) and no one got sunburnt, not even Stephanie. 

We spent our last night on the island enjoying the sunset and then eating out for some yummy catch of the day fish and chips.  The next morning we headed back to Fremantle and showed Stephanie all the yummy places to eat.  Fremantle is a nice historic town with lots of neat buildings.  It was a good way to end her trip to the east coast.  Dropping her off at the airport was sad.  But it was nice to have spent a lovely 3 weeks with her again, travelling around Australia. 

I am now back at the farm harvesting away at the olives.  We are finally almost done Spanish Queens and will then move onto Manzinellos.  There is another Canadian girl here as well, she is from Halifax, it is cool to have someone to share a love for Canada with..haha.  We also have two Dutch girls here as well as a girl from Switzerland and a girl from Germany.  AH! and how can I forget, last week I was finally approved to teach in WA and I have work next Monday and Thursday in Lancelin...Yay!!! The teacher who called me today was very excited to see that I am able to teach for them for the next few months...finally!!!! It was an exciting day.