Before arriving, we were prepared to raise our budget for Australia, but it was still difficult to get used to how expensive everything was. Our 30 minute taxi ride from the airport to the apartment was $55 AUD (Australian dollar is more or less on par with Canadian dollar)! A simple breakfast for two was $30. Now that may not seem absurd for most Vancouverites since Vancouver is also notorious for its high living expense, but having just spent the previous 4 months in Asia, this was a bit of a shock for us.
We continued with our self-guided walking tour and ended up in the Northbridge neighbourhood, where we found lots of Asian restaurants and trendy cafes (Ummm...are we back at home?). We had pho at Viet Hoa on William Street and it was delicious!
I know what you're thinking: Why did we spend all that money and an entire day to visit this strangely-named island? Well, while we were planning our trip Karbo had seen on Buzzfeed pictures of these animals called quokkas. Quokkas are cute little marsupials known for the their adorable smiles, and the only place in the world you can find them is on Rottnest Island. We decided this is one of Karbo's "must-see's" of our RTW trip (along with the windmills in Kinderdijk and the Scottish Highlands). After riding around the island for a couple of hours and soaked in the sights of the beautiful ocean and ecology of the island, we parked our bikes and joined a "quokka walk" with a local volunteer guide, Ted. Ted was well-versed in quokka and we got to see tons of them, which apparently isn't always the case on these tours. I guess we chose a good day to visit :)
While we were on the island, we saw a few warning signs about venomous snakes. That's when we remembered we had to be really careful because we had heard about all the deadly animals in Australia. The same rule apparently applies to birds as well. We saw tons of crazy looking birds that we've never seen before and I got really close to them to take photos. Then we later found out on National Geographic that one of these birds was a magpie and they can be very vicious. This girl got her eye poked out by a magpie because she got too close to its nest!