Happy Australia Day! Don’t you love it when you wake up on a Sunday morning feeling like its Saturday? Yay to long weekends!

Our good friend Spencer all the way from Melbourne arrived with his girlfriend, Kyla, who has never been to Perth. So we decided to make a trip down to Rottnest Island. Can you believe Jay and I have never been to Rottnest together? We bought 2 way tickets for the 10am ferry ride from Fremantle for $60 each.

Rottnest Island was as beautiful as I remembered. This time however, I skipped the bikes and took the bus. After all it was only for $14 a day to hop on and off. It stops at all the bays in a loop. It was a shame we didn’t bring our snorkels. You would think a touristy establishment would have snorkels for rent! The water was amazing after you get over the initial cold. After spending 3 hours at the beautiful Little Salmon Bay, we decided to head back to the pub at Hotel Rottnest for a lunch feed.

The first thing we ordered was the Deep Fried Shrimp, Aioli and lemon ($18). Simple and good – there’s nothing that could go wrong with fresh shrimp deep fried to a crisp. I like that you can eat it all – head, shell…everything. The aioli could have been stronger flavoured.

While eating, we had a little surprise! A poor little crabby obviously got caught with the shrimp…and made it into the bucket. I shared half with Spencer.

Kyla and I ordered the Pork Ribs in a tangy bbq sauce, chips and garden salad ($32). It was really good at first bite but after a while, the sauce was just overpowering. The meat did fall off the bone very easily. I think they should have gone easy on the sauce. This would be best ordered to share. The chips were lovely – crisp outside, soft inside. The garden salad was beautifully fresh. It was nice.

Jay and Spencer had the best order in my opinion – the King George Whiting fillets deep fried in batter, chips and salad ($26). The fish was beautifully soft with a crisp thin batter on the outside. Dipped in Tartare sauce… yum!

The food must have been very tempting because several Quokkas came our way. They were so cute and soft. Big rat like creatures with funny faces.

Despite not actively swimming, we were beat from the sun! We slept all the way back to  Fremantle where there was a festival so we had to check that out.. We also had to have a beer at the Little Creatures…and then the obligatory ice cream at the ice cold rock creamery. Then we were so full, we could not think about dinner.

Happy Australia Day! We spent it the way Australia Day should be spent!