moody jetty

A lovely photo from Flickr user Dean Bradshaw.

He was practicing with his new cable release: this photo is a two-minute exposure.

He has some other good Rotto photos too - see link above.

Is Senator Ian Campbell taking photos of the jetty? He spoke to The Australian this week from Rotto, after being demoted from Environment to Human Services.

If you're going to be demoted, Rottnest is the perfect place to hear the news.

congrats

Rotto Bloggo salutes Sascha Baron Cohen, who's won a Golden Globe.

'Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan' is unquestionably the finest film to be screened on Rotto.

"I was faced with a choice — death or to breathe in the air that had been trapped in a small pocket between his buttocks for 30 years," Cohen remarked about that wrestling scene.

No doubt about it: Rotto is a place for winners.

Rotto in the headlines

What a huge week it’s been for Rotto news.

Details on the new development on Mt Herschel, news on the demolition of Dome and its new location, and even a new manager for the pub.

It was all topped off by a marvelous Alston cartoon on the weekend.

Readers of this blog have been exhorting Rotto Bloggo for our views on these matters of import.

* The new development: if we were in charge of Rotto we wouldn’t do it, but from what we know so far it seems OK.
* Dome: good news – it needs more room.
* Alston: a cartooning treasure.

As The West reported, the 4.5-star hotel will cost $50 million and have 120 rooms – some of which will cost $300 per night.

Shock horror! A premium view Geordie Bay cottage goes for around $240 a night in summer…but of course it sleeps six people.

(With that being $40 per person, is Rotto really an expensive holiday? We think not).

“Construction of the hotel is set to begin mid-year and the proponents are hoping to begin operation in the summer of 2008-09,” according to The West.

One of the Broadwater images in The West showed a nice bath. Why would you want to have a bath on Rotto?

We were wondering: with the extra 350 people and the 65 staff the Broadwater place means, will Rotto’s water resources be stretched?

Will these extra people spoil the ambiance of the gorgeous island? We can’t see it happening. Even in high summer, at times Rotto seems deserted. What’s a few more?

(We’ve searched for images of the Broadwater development, but have failed miserably. We’ve emailed the company asking for pics).

It would be nice to have a good squizz at the plans…the Rottnest Society says: “The government has let us all down in not keeping a written commitment to allow the Western Australian public to comment via a properly constituted public comment process on the concept plans for the proposed new hotel at Mt Herschel”.

The Dome building…we see the people in charge of Rotto, the Rottnest Island Authority, have to pay to have the old site demolished.

Cast your minds back to 2005, in Parliament…
“836. Hon NORMAN MOORE to the minister representing the Minister for Tourism: What will be the cost of…the demolition of the existing building?
Hon LJILJANNA RAVLICH replied: The Rottnest Island Authority will be responsible for the demolition of the existing building. This work will be subject to a tender process.”

At least we have a pic of the Dome building to show you. But keep in mind it’s an early draft – this could change, says Dome.

We were brunching at Dome on Jan 30, and someone at our table marveled at the packed crowd and suggested it was a licence to print money.

Keep in mind they’re open in winter, too. At times Rotto Bloggo has been the only punter in the place.

'Hard and fast with the Wild Bunch'

The hardy souls that do the Rotto swim are on a par with participants in the Marathon des Sables, the Yukon Arctic Ultra race and the La Ruta de los Conquistadores.

(That last one, as any fule kno, is an epic mountain bike race held in November in the jungles of Costa Rica.)

The Ruta is "widely acknowledged as one of the most brutal in the world", says a story in the Belfast Telegraph.

"In the modern era, finding a true off-the-beaten-track adventure can be difficult," the BT says.

"Comparing the relative dangers of proposed expeditions is the adventurer's equivalent of comparing City bonuses; bigger is better and sheer bravado is best. The less likely you are to return from distant shores with all your limbs, the greater the credibility of the challenge ahead. Should you wish to enhance your reputation beyond measure, best not to return at all."

And from Cottesloe, Rotto is a distant shore. The BT talks about the adventure of swimming the English Channel, and then segues to our own local event...

"Although only half as wide as its English counterpart, the Rottnest Channel is an ocean swim that presents a rather different set of challenges. The 19.2km stretch of water separates Rottnest Island from Perth, in Western Australia. Like the English Channel, it can get bloody cold; unlike the English Channel, it is patrol-led by Great White Sharks. At least one swimmer has been killed in the area.

"The first person to swim it was Gerd von Dincklage-Schulenburg in 1956. He completed the swim in 9hr 45min, and his feat caught the imagination of a local newspaper editor. Later that year the first race was held, won, appropriately enough, by a Mr Seaborn.

"Known to aficionados as "the Rotto", the modern race attracts around 2,500 entries (places for 2007 are still available), the first wave of which sets off from Perth's Cottesloe beach at dawn.

"Once at sea, competitors swim either solo or in teams, and must contend with notorious rip currents plus, in between the sharks, squadrons of stingrays. Almost as dangerous as the marine life are the support boats. With each entry requiring a designated pilot vessel, swimmers must pick their way through a huge flotilla of craft.

"The effect, some swimmers report, is like participating in the Normandy landings having swum there in the first place."

news in brief

A spurt of Rotto news in The West Australian: toilets and fish in Inside Cover, and fears tentland is on Aboriginal graves.

Fish: a bloke is selling fish from his boat at the refueling jetty in Thomson on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays between 10am and noon.

(Rotto Bloggo thinks: why not catch your own fish?)

Toilets: a Parker Point pissoir has had its solar panel pilfered. The authorities are trucking water to the toilet to keep it going.

Graves: the tent area “...WA’s favourite camping ground, will close for up to six months from May and may be moved next summer after revelations that it could sit partially on a traditional Aboriginal burial ground”, says the West.

Toilets pictured are not the solar-powered variety.

New Year on Rotto

We’re back from four fabulous days on Rotto.

Two of them were New Year’s Eve and the next day.

NYE was marvelous. The balcony of our premium view Geordie Bay bunker was already decorated with tinsel and baubles when we arrived.

In the morning we stuffed our faces at the bakery and then snorkeled and swum at the Basin.

Later the first sparkling of the day: refreshing after chasing fish underwater and never catching them.

But no beach drinking: a big no-no. We know this because from our balcony we saw two rent-a-cops amble onto the beach. The obese one had a chocolate bar in one hand and a packet of chips in the other. They saw a woman in her 40s drinking something out of a stubbie, charged over to her and had words.

When the woman poured her beverage onto the sand we booed the fat rent-a-cop loudly from the balcony. The woman’s behaviour was in sharp contrast to a friend of Rotto Bloggo’s, who was in Caroline Thomson and had to be next door to young hoons, whose drinking and fighting was only briefly interrupted by one of them being arrested and hauled off by the real cops.

Anyway…much more champagne was drunk, and we welcomed in 2007 with party poppers, blowing bubbles and paper bugles.

A top night and a great way to start a new year: on Rotto.

off to Rotto!

We're off to the island today.

Time for a few days of Rotto Blisso.

We'll try to stay out of the fetid water at the pub.

Time for reading recent issues of the TLS on the balcony of our premium view Geordie pad, eating and drinking, attempting to break the course record at Brett Heady's Family Fun Park, snorkelling under gin palaces, wetting a line, eating and drinking...

Rotto Bloggo will be back in the New Year.

the sea

Rottnest news: first, death.

The Herald Sun says a 41-year-old man was found floating in a bay around 3pm yesterday; ABC News says he was 47 and found at Thompson (sic) Bay. Both reported the death wasn't suspicious.

Second, fishing: new marine sanctuary zones will be enforced at Green Island, the West End and Armstrong Bay, while existing zones at Parker Point and Kingston Reef will be extended. This applies from July 1 next year.

The ABC says the Wilderness Society is disappointed. Rotto Bloggo can't see the opposite reaction from Recfishwest just yet.

"The sanctuaries are likely to provide for large 'trophy' size examples of several fish species, such as dhufish, that would be prized attractions for high-value tourism experiences like snorkelling and scuba", a boffin is quoted as saying in the Minister's media release.

boat work

This could be worth looking into, if you've got a few weeks free until February...

'Boat person needed to live aboard a 30m luxury power yacht moored at Rottnest for the summer Dec - Feb. Boating experience necessary...'

The above link goes to the Seek.com.au ad, which concludes: 'Boating experience is essential and high regards will be given to presentation and keenness. Excellent pay and conditions are offered in a superb environment.'

Sounds good to Rotto Bloggo. The closest we've ever got to them luxury tubs is snorkelling under them near Geordie.

Not long until we're on Rottnest: four glorious nights from Saturday. The only fly in the ointment: the Rottnest Island Authority hasn't sent the bumf yet. They say it's a busy time. No!!!

beach bum

A Rotto Bloggo reader has been bold enough to provide this pic.

It's more than 30 years old.

No hat! No SPF30! Tight white shorts! No doubt kaftanned women were swooning at the sight of this hirsute hunk of man meat.

It's hard to believe that this fresh-faced youngster is now a leading troublemaker.

cable

Rotto Bloggo was leafing through the incomparable All The News In A Flash: we were re-reading Mr W.E. (Bill) Weaver's account of the second submarine cable being laid.

It was 71 years ago today that this happened, according to Bill:

"Arrangements completed for handling spare cable. Pit dug 20 feet and timbered and floored adjacent to jetty at Woodman's Point. Spear legs erected over pit using 26 ft wrought iron poles and winch fixed in position on jetty."

They worked either side of Christmas Day. The cable was done by 12 February 1936. ATNIAF says 11,662 pounds 2s 8d "to purchase and lay the cable had been notified in the Commonwealth Gazette."

beach outrage

Someone should be sacked.

There's a report in the Sydney Morning Herald that just one Australian beach got the nod for a list of the world's sexiest beaches.

"Byron Bay was the sole Aussie beach to get a nod from Forbes Traveller, which compiled the list based on research by their own journalists, and other industry experts including tour planners, meteorologists, hotel owners and marine biologists," the SMH said.

FT gushed thus about BB: ""chalky-white sands, deliciously temperate weather and occasional visits from dolphins and migrating whales".

Its nudist beach was also highly regarded.

Someone's head must roll: why didn't one of Rotto's beaches make the list? They are far, far superior to any hippie-strewn bit of sand on the east coast.

Would it help if Rotto had a nude beach?

At least none of the Gold Coast's 42 beaches made the cut.

'randy Rotto teens'

We can’t wait.

Rotto Bloggo will be moseying down to Pinky Beach on New Year’s Eve to see the action.

The action is liquored-up young people having sex.

According to last weekend’s Post, kids in Years 8 through 11 behave abominably on Rotto.

“…the worst of them behave like the worst of Year 12 school leavers – drinking, fighting, stealing and having sex…”, the Post reported.

“They crowd on to Pinky’s (sic) Beach every night, up to 200 boys and girls, many of them drunk when they get there.”

Top stuff. Rotto Bloggo hopes it’s happening Jan 31 – the Post said the imbibing/fisticuffs/robbing/boofing happened late last month.

The Post had a lovely front page photo of Pinky, with this stirring caption: ‘…idyllic by day, a boozy teen hotbed at night’.

What's this? A shirt torn off the torso of a randy teen at the start of a carnal frolic at Pinky, washed up on the beach the next day?

Try harder to go backwards

A regular Rotto Bloggo reader was flicking through pages of 'The Architect', the journal of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (WA Chapter) and was thrilled to see an architectural retrospective on the waterfront cottages on Thomson, Geordie and Longreach Bays.

Being an architectural journal, the writing (by Simon Anderson at UWA)
Is, of course, quite…er…analytical.

Let’s have a look at Simon’s work:

The cottages’ purpose “…was to provide affordable and sustainable holiday housing in both historically sensitive (in the case of Thompson Bay) and environmentally delicate (in the case of Geordie and Longreach Bays) location, and it is hard to argue that they have not been outstandingly successful in these respects.”

Quite right. No argument there, apart from having Thompson instead of Thomson.

“They were built en masse, yet they deliver a level of spatial variety rarely achieved in large scale repetitive residential developments.”

Spatial variety? They have different dimensions, we think that means…

Anyway, as Prof Julius Sumner Miller would’ve asked: how is it so?

“As houses, they are everything that houses are now not. They are indestructibly robust. They are very small but very well planned and very well sectioned for privacy and outdoor amenity. They do not have big front doors, and the front door enters the kitchen…they are generous if you want to eat, talk, sleep, read, go fishing or swimming, but do not offer much in the way of domestic ceremony.”

OK. Not sure how they let you go fishing or swimming, but we’ll let it go through. Much better is this next bit:

“They let you live your life rather than ruling your life. They are successful because they look backwards to earlier times. Is not Perth always supposed to be behind the times? Maybe we should try harder to go backwards?”

And the crowd goes wild! Deafening ovation for Simon!

Then there’s a list of what they don’t do. These include: “They do not countenance the curvilinear, continuous form or the monumental. Instead the use a logic of discrete rectilinearity to respond to the infinite and infinitesimal particularities of place at both macro and micro scales.”

Hmm. We read this several times, tried to work it out with a pencil, set a small fire under it, and made it a martini. But we were no closer to comprehension. Our guess: the straight lines work well.

There’s some talk about how they look different form far away and up close, and then:

“They are successful because of this fractional dimensionality (the term given to objects which exist differently at two or more scales of observation) and pixellated viscerality.”

Pixellated viscerality?

Too much for this simple blogger. But the main message you can take from Simon’s monograph is the cottages are first-class.

Will the cottages in the new Mt Herschel development be as good? Don’t bet on it.

A chair admires the discrete rectilinearity of Thomson Bay cottages.

That's ambitious

The Ashes bandwagon has moved to Perth: hordes of Australians - which include Rotto Bloggo - fully expect our glorious team to win back the urn by the end of the Test at the WACA.
If only an Australian Test cricketer had been born on Rotto! Kim Hughes was born in Margaret River, but no wearer of the baggy green took their first breath in a Rottnest bungalow.
Still, there is a link between the looming cricketfest and the wonderful island: The Australian reported on an English fan wandering the Perth streets with a sign that says: Will swap cricket tickets for Rottnest Island Ferry token.
Will he have any takers?

A seagull outside the bakery, before he heads off to the WACA to see Australia win back the Ashes.

east of Eden

Apologies for two weeks of no posts, but Rotto Bloggo has been in Melbourne.
Of course, there are Rotto connections to be found even in Bleak City.
Pink public transport tickets promote Ednafest and Barry Humphries' new show, Back With a Vengeance. It starts in Melbourne on 19 December.
BWaV has been on in Perth, and Rotto Bloggo saw it on Thursday night (taking care not to sit in a very front row).
The Rotto connection? Dame Edna described Perth as being East Rottnest - how right she is.
She also addressed the audience as quokkas.

required Rotto reading

One of Rotto Bloggo's regular readers, Old Salt, has sent us his hot tip for a must-take tome if you're on Rottnest.
Old Salt is a crusty type who is top-notch when it comes to matters maritime and piscine - this tip is gold...

'This is a picture of the cover of my favourite book of all time, The Marine and Estuarine Fishes of Western Australia – A Field Guide for Anglers and Divers by Barry Hutchins and Martin Thompson, published by the WA Museum.

'It's not actually a book about Rottnest, but is required reading if one dives at Rottnest.

'This book has been to Rottnest several times, invariably thrown into the bottom of a backpack with a load of snorkelling gear – as evidenced by its generally rugged and wrinkled appearance. It’s got sand between many of the pages, too. This is because I always reach for it as soon as I emerge from the water while the fish are still fresh in my mind so I can identify them.

'Why The Bazzmeister and Marty haven’t been nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature, I don’t know.'

The book is $16.45 - click the link to order (and check out the Museum's other books too). There are around 20 copies on Bookfinder - the most expensive is $191.09!

More Rotto images for sale

Further to the post about Chris Barry's marvellous Rotto images...
Rotto Bloggo spotted an image of the island near a cafe toilet this week.
Ben Tessler's photo of the Bathurst lighthouse is for sale: we saw it in the Wild Fig Cafe, in Scarborough.
Like Chris' photos, this would be a great Xmas present: a snip at $350...
No sign of Ben Tessler on the www, but the WFC says you can buy it direct from them.
*Phone snap does no justice to actual photo. Why is the water crooked but the lighthouse straight?

Rampaging kids!

Schoolies!

Are they the modern Australian equivalent of Vikings (scrofulous Vikings at that), or just kids having largely harmless fun before they start working for The Man?
And the parents are just as bad! ‘Booze-supplying parents irk police’, was one recent headline.
In fact, police are “dismayed”…“fearing”…“frustrated”…and “worried”.
(Stop me now – I’m starting to sound like Not The West [which is gone but not forgotten].)
Anyway – a Rotto Bloggo reader has written to share his schoolie sojourn on the island of nearly a quarter of a century ago.
This man is now a highly respectable, Rivers-wearing, P&C-involved, tea-drinking public servant and the head of a nuclear family unit.
The moral of the story? Plus ca change…

‘With 'schoolies week' now under way I thought would reminisce about my own end-of-school trip to Rottnest at the end of Year 12, which in my case was in 1982.

‘Today, kids who've just completed school can't get onto the island without booked accommodation. There are activities to keep everyone occupied, and extra police are sent over to keep an eye on things.

‘In 1982, the procedure was as follows:

‘1. Pack. One t-shirt, one pair shorts, boardies, beach towel.

‘2. Ask father to drive you to the East Street Jetty. Spend car trip evading questions like "so where will you be staying over there?"

‘3. Arrive at East Street Jetty and buy ferry ticket. Usually 10 minutes before ferry due to depart. Throw bag into luggage cage to leave both hands free for drinking on the ferry (one hand for the middy, the other to hang on if it gets rough).

‘4. Board ferry. Track down schoolmates. Work out where the hell we're gonna stay over there. Realise nobody's got anywhere to stay.

‘5. Travel to Rottnest.

‘6. Disembark. Collect luggage.

‘7. Go to pub.

‘8. Get drunk.

‘9. Hear that a guy from school's got a mate who's got a mate who's got a girlfriend who's cousin's got a bungalow with space in the sleepout. On the floor.

'10. Depart pub at closing time, make way (as fairly disparate group) to aforementioned bungalow. Collapse on floor.

'11. Wake up next morning to find we crashed out in the wrong bungalow.'

Pic is of the condom machine in the toilet at the pub, which was out of order last time Rotto Bloggo checked it out. Do you think it would've been fixed for Schoolies?

"12,500 miles to Rottnest"

Forgive the dearth of postings in the last few days, but Rotto Bloggo has been in mourning for Paul Rigby.
As the obit in The Australian reported (see link above), Rigby "...won Walkleys in 1960, 61, 63, 66 and 69. Back in those days, there were editors in Australia who thought if a cartoonist didn't draw like Rigby, then they couldn't draw cartoons".
It's been estimated Rigby drew 15,000 cartoons in his 50-year career.
Of course, a few touched on, depicted, or mentioned Rottnest.
And who can forget the booklet he did with Kirwan Ward - Rottnest Island Sketchbook? It's rare, but it's a must for any Rotto bibliophile.
Here's a detail from a 1983 Rigby cartoon that mentioned Rotto: the 12,500 miles to Rotto sign indicates the cartoon was about rhe battle for the America's Cup being waged in New York.