Final Days in Australia

I’m finally taking a minute to catch up and make sure I get down the highlights before I forget them.  To revert back to our camping days, this post contains contributions of Josh’s fine camera work, and Emma’s fine editing skills.  I love seeing kangaroos in the wild and instead of capturing boring still frames or ground level video, we have a kookaburra’s eye view this time:

Our last full day in Australia was spent on Rottnest Island.  I hadn’t been there before, so it was a fun to explore this alongside Maeve, with Leah, Andrew and Josh who are very familiar with the island and helping make the day full. We got up early to catch the first ferry across so that we could make the most of our day, and took a late ferry back.  We managed a perfect warm day to explore and enjoy some beaches, and later scout some quokka’s for a coveted ‘quokka selfie’.

Sadly Emma had to work, so we were the Rottnest crew...  Maeve had just come to life.  She is NOT a morning person... I just told them not to talk to her as it is not always pleasant.  Ha.  It took her about an hour and half, and there she was... our happy camper -).

2nd order of business after renting bikes - breakfast.  

First beach we hit -- The Basin.  It was super cool and the perfect swimming hole.

Uncle Andrew and Maeve

Getting in the picture before jumping in

Leah was complaining that she couldn't navigate The Basin since she's not coordinated (ha) so we hit the next beach down -- Longreach Bay.  It wasn't a bad call...

Maeve leaving her "M" mark on the beach..

Maeve was fascinated with the quokka's too... they were all over the island.  These are the cutest little marsupial animals ever.  You're not supposed to touch them, but Maeve had a hard time holding herself back.  They are quite comfortable with everyone.

A little out of order, but the blog can be finicky.  Back to the beach and our lazing around taking in  the sun and warmth.

I need to do a whole other post on how many selfies I'm now finding on my phone from Maeve, but in order to get our much needed quokka photo, Andrew pulled out the selfie stick for us to use... Neither Maeve or I had ever used one before, but as  you can see, we decided to embrace it.

Totally safe and recommended..

Lighthouse pics on Rottnest

Hard to beat the view while cycling around

Group selfie photo

And... got it.  A happy lil' quokka

Before heading back on the ferry, we got much deserved ice cream cones

Here we are at the airport saying goodbye to 3/4 of the Woodcock family.  We had an early flight out and had to leave the house by 430am, and the entire family got up to see us off.  Then Leah wandered back to bed (smart), but the other 3 took us all the way to the airport.  What a special trip and time we had in Australia.  Thank you for all that you did with us.  It was a great start to our trip.  Next post has us in Southeast Asia :-).