best Rotto book

One of Rotto Bloggo's links is busted.

Someone left a comment recently, pointing out the link to the UWA Press site for 'Rottnest Island: A Documentary History' is broken.

Alas, it is so, and we can't find a decent link at UWA or indeed anywhere to this must-have publication.

We fired up Bookfinder: there's a copy in the UK via Amazon - it seems the softcover - for about $66.

In Oz there are two copies: they both seem to be the hardback edition. One is $75, the other $78.

If you're loaded Robert Muir has a copy signed by two of the authors for $93.

Sorry about the broken link: we'll try and find a permanent spot on the WWW where RIADH resides.

"extremely liked island"

More international approval of Rottnest. We're very bilingual, thanks to Babelfish.

This German gives Rotto's beaches the thumbs-up:

Also the close convenient and extremely liked island "rotting nest Iceland" is to be explored with its fantastic beaches absolutely. The name this received from its Netherlands discoverer Willem de Vlamingh, to that the small Quokkas (Minikaengurus) in 17. Century for rats held.

We're also into property ownership, s/he observes of Perth:

Approximately around the "town center" about 30 "Suburbs" developed. This Suburbs or suburbs consists to the largest part of property or renting houses. Australians love it to possess their own house. Dwellings are to be found direct rather atypical and in the city center. The Suburbs is equipped with a good infrastructure. One finds own parka situations, Shoppingcenter as well as kindergartens and schools.

Babelfish really is impressive. Rotto Bloggo had assumed it could only handle Latin/Roman characters, but no - it does Japanese and Korean too! How amazement.

We liked the pictures on this Korean blog...and here's what he says about cycling on Rotto:

It puts two hands even from the uphill road and it burns,! ! It is how! Two hands it will put from the mileage plan elementary school motion market and and Baeng Baeng it goes round.. Like that.. ting Isn't degree level! ! u Under under; ; -_- ... The muscle place it takes and it puts and.. It stops and it builds and to be taking it appears.. Sound -_-; Should have been seen with the whole course degree of difficulty of the island the cotton, so smooth but the facility which is not all. Like Cheju-Do quite or the uphill and the downhill become repetition. The person where the experience or the physical strength which other see the bicycle especially are insufficient.. Only suffering quality phen description below tightly good terrain -_-;

Right. And he likes the West End:

The as well most beautiful scenery in the effort end which is strenuous Oh! the thing authorization which is the possibility of meeting! !

a Rottnest film

Another Rotto film.

We were sorry to miss ‘Amy Goes to Wadjemup Island’ at the St Kilda Film Festival’s Perth run earlier this month.

Director Denise Groves tells Rotto Bloggo filming was last year.

“The initial film shoot took 5 days but we were in post - production for about a year,” Denise says.

Amy is eight minutes long and has 3D animation. Here’s the blurb from producer Jennifer Gherardi’s website:

‘Amy visits the island with her family, who while on holiday, are challenged to integrate the past incarceration of indigenous prisoners at the beginning of the colony in Western Australia. Amy and her family embody a contemporary acceptance of the past and present. Metaphorically they venture into the future by finding their own way of reconciling their experience during their visit. Amy makes a special connection with the quokkas and she establishes her own way of seeing and dreaming.’

And this from the St Kilda Festival site:

‘When seven-year-old Amy visits the holiday island with her family, they remember the past incarceration and death of Indigenous prisoners held there at the beginning of the West Australian colony. Amy’s innocence is also disturbed as she finds the indigenous animals, quokkas, are under pressure from human habitation.’

If you want to add ‘Amy Goes to Wadjemup Island’ to your Rottnest collection, email jagadmin@westnet.com.au and get $17 plus $5 postage and handling ready.

We’ve updated the Wikipedia entry.

boardbuster!

Teg? Grat? Na?

All perfectly legitimate, according to the OSW.

The OSW is the Official Scrabble Words, and lists all the permissible words from two letters to nine letters.

Even prez is in there.

Scrabble is the Rottnest board game of choice, and Rotto Bloggo has many fond Scrab memories.

There was the time someone was caught using a letter tile as a blank. There was the time someone memorably described putting down all seven letters (and thus scoring the extra 50 points) as a boardbuster.

Rottnest isn't in the OSW: if it was, it'd be between rotting and rotula.

Quokka is in, but Lancier isn't.

If Longreach was in, it's be between longnesses and longs.

Geordie is in, but Wadjemup is not (it would be between wadis and wadmaal).

"shipwrecked in paradise"

It's always interesting hearing someone else's account of something you know well.

Rotto Bloggo is a keen reader of assessments of the beautiful island: are the things we take for granted boring, banal - banausic, even?

So we loved this young person's account of her two days on Rotto.

jo21 is from North America and her favourite book is The Great Gatsby. She headed to Freo from a hostel...

"I probably should have planned exactly how I was going to get out there though. Me being me, I thought there'd be loads of boats going out to Rottnest from Fremantle each day. Not quite...found I had to wait three hours for a ferry."

The way things are done on Rotto was a surprise.

"The pace of life on the island, as I found when booking up the hostel there, is significantly slower than the rest of the world. Back in Sydney I was left on hold for 26 minutes while I organised accommodation there. The Rottnest Island Authority is pretty much like the on-island Mafia. Everything is overseen by them. You have to pay $5 extra just to hire a friggin' pillowcase at the youth hostel. I felt sure I would wake up on my first morning on the island to find a horse's head next to me."

We mentioned Magnetic Island a couple of posts ago: jo21 mentions it as well.

"I'm telling you, stepping onto that island was like stepping back a few decades. It was pretty reminiscent of Magnetic Island over in Queensland. It's just a really good, wholesome family friendly place with no cars and just one fast food outlet. Big up to Red Rooster for bribing the Mafia into getting a branch onto the island."

However the luggage delivery met with jo21's approval: "I was staying in the only hostel on the island and it just happened to be converted from a load of old Army barracks. The pretty cool system actually involved all your bags being delivered from the boat to the accommodation, which was really cushdy."

(We're sure she meant cushy).

Anyway, then there was bike-riding, a dip in a bay, "enchanting" quokkas...jo21 then observed she was "shipwrecked in paradise".

We hear jo21 about the RIA. There was no spatula in our place a couple of weeks ago, but we were charged for hiring a couple of extra sheets.

"snorkel-friendly grottos"

People in New York's Hudson Valley and the Catskills have been urged to visit Rottnest.

Their 'guy Down Under', Aaron Munzer, has included the beautiful island in his list of '10 things you can't miss' about our land girt by sea.

The Grampians, Salamanca Markets, Magnetic Island, the footy and the Great Barrier Reef all cop a mention - as does Rotto.

Aaron only has Rotto at #7 on his list, but at least it's on.

"The name Rottnest Island, Western Australia, makes it sound like a haven for Dutch pirates, but nowadays its only permanent inhabitants are the tame, cat-sized marsupials called quokkas and their buddies, the peacocks, who love leftover sandwiches (but don't feed them, you could get kicked off the island)," he reports.

"Its deep, snorkel-friendly grottos are filled with coral and tropical fish, and the stellar waves on the side facing the Indian Ocean draw surfers from around Australia."

(Isn't a grotto a small cave, usually with attractive features?)

"You can rent a bike for the day or get a guided tour from the friendly bus drivers. There's a picturesque lighthouse on one end of the island, and World War II ruins dot the higher points on the landscape."

(Hmm, actually the guns are in superb nick, but that is a mere bagatelle of a quibble).

Aaron writes for the Times Herald-Record, so we expect eager visitors from places like Woodstock, Roscoe and Jeffersonville to be catching ferries from Fremantle soon.

Warning: the Rotto peacocks aren't to be confused with warbler Burt Bacharach.

badroom secrets

A stark contrast during Rotto Bloggo's recent five-day sojourn.

We were in an eight-bedder, and the time had been carefully assigned.

Rotto Bloggo had one all the time, as did another pair.

However...the other two bedrooms were divided: a couple of people the first couple of days, then a couple plus kids were moving in.

(They were meant to come for three nights, but only managed two: their ferry journey was cancelled, and it didn't seem that rough...)

Anyway...the images you see here are how the first lot left their rooms for the couple and kids...

One excellent, and one...how shall we say...not so good.

Even the curtains are crooked in the not-so-good example.

Also, we note in today's excellent The Sunday Times a young model named Bridget Malcolm is enthusing about stuff.

She loves Rottnest! But she dislikes the cooler months...

"I hate winter! I hate the cold and the wind and the rain," she says.

Even in a Rotto villa with the heater on, knocking back some red and playing Scrabble?

jerk on end of line

This wrasse was caught near Longreach - safely away from the new no-go Rottnest fishing zones.

He was thrown back: a Rotto Bloggo associate described the wrasse as rubbish.

We see we were using terminal tackle as we wet a line: "Some examples of terminal tackle include weights, floats, and swivels".

What about those new no-go zones?

The new zones are at Green Island, West End and Armstrong Bay; existing zones at Parker Point and Kingston Reef have been extended.

You can still fish from about 83 per cent of the Rotto shore.

Yes, but a couple of the new verboten spots were nice spots.

We can't find much in the way of reaction to the changes.

There was this in a Recfishwest statement last year:

"Recreational fishers also want a future for Rottnest, but not one where we are being told that we are the only problem and where there is a no balanced approach. Recreational fishers have done more for the aquatic conservation of this state than any other group yet this is never recognised by the green fringe who think that locking up the world will solve all its problems."

Mr Percival!

Yesterday in Borders Rotto Bloggo glanced at a book about islands.

It went on at great length about the 40 best islands you have to visit before you die.

Absoloute piffle, alas, because there was no mention of Rottnest: the nearest they got to the beautiful island was Bali.

One day last week we were cleaning fish at the end of Thomson Bay when this magnificent creature took a keen interest in what we were doing.

He loved the herring and tailor leftovers.

Would this happen on Bali? Methinks not.

Books that lecture you about what you have to do before you shuffle off the mortal coil are a major pain in the ass, and have no place on Rotto.

bliss

Back from five days and nights on Rotto.

What bliss! Howling winds, driving rain, spectacular sunsets and sunrises, dramatic rainbows, lots of drinking, eating and reading (books, magazines, papers), long walks, minigolf and airhockey, fishing, staring out the window, Scrabble and sunshine.

As well as speculating on the reasons behind cancelled ferries, watching planes touch-and-go at the airfield, and marvelling at the prices: $6 for a loaf of bread.

It was so sunny we saw people swimming in Fay's Bay on Wednesday and Thursday. They seemed refreshed after their dips.

The smell of the Rottnest pines...the sight of fresh quokka dung...the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks...

Five days was barely enough.

Time to get back into the swing of things.

Rottnest Sun and Lighthouse

Rottnest Sun and Lighthouse
Originally uploaded by Dave Curtis

To Rotto today for five glorious days.

The Sunday Times says the weather is set to be rough this afternoon, so hopefully we’ll be in our villa before the worst hits.

Good stuff, that wind, as Premier Carps said earlier this week, as he praised the wind power on Rotto:

‘Perth householders could soon be using the “Fremantle Doctor” to save energy and cut electricity bills.

‘Premier and Minister for Science and Innovation, Alan Carpenter today announced State Government funding for two projects that could lead the way to electricity being generated from small wind turbines on suburban roofs.

‘Mr Carpenter said WA was a world leader in the development of innovative, renewable energy solutions.

‘Other technologies developed in the State include…the wind-diesel technology installed by Verve Energy in remote areas of WA including Hopetoun, Coral Bay and Rottnest Island and now being considered for other parts of Australia and the world…’