We spent the first few days just hanging around Perth. On the first day we checked out King’s Park which overlooks the Swan River and the CBD (Central Business District, it’s what Australians call downtown). King’s Park is Perth’s version of NY City’s Central Park. At over 400 acres, it’s by far the most significant green space within the city, and that’s saying something because you can hardly walk two blocks anywhere in Perth without hitting a park of some sort. It has monuments, open lawns, bushland, fountains, cafes, and elevated glass walkway through the treetops, and botanical gardens. Kings Park was a hit with the family and a quick way to get them adjusted to the climate considering it was about 115 ˚F the day we went and they had just come from winter back in the US. Must have felt like they stepped off the plane and into an oven to them but they came right after a while.
After hanging out in Perth for a few days it was time for an excursion to Rottnest Island. Rotto (as the locals call it) is located several miles off the coast and is completely owned by the government. Like most of Australia’s best real estate, and in fact all of Australia if you go back far enough, Rotto was once a prison. Now the government operates it as a park. The only full-time residents are a ranger, lighthouse keeper, and perhaps a couple of seasonal support staff as needed. Everyone else gets there by ferry, and no private automobiles are allowed so most people get around by bike. Picture a version of Smith Island with clear water, wallabies, and filled with Aussies in bikinis and swimming trunks and you’ve got a fair idea of what Rottnest is like. Rottnest also marks the southern terminus of the Leeuwin Current which brings warm water south, so it supports some of the southernmost corals in the world.
We rented bikes and snorkeling gear and set out to find some snorkeling sites on the west side of the island. After a few stops to snap photos of quokkas (dwarf wallabies that are peculiar to Rotto and a couple of other spots in WA) in the 
underbrush and views of a couple nearshore shipwrecks we got to our first snorkeling site. We waded in and started swimming toward Africa. The lumps of limestone on the bottom were half covered with macroalgae and coral. There was abundant fish life, consisting mostly of buff bream and various wrasses, parrotfish, and damselfish.
After another bike ride north along the west coast of the island we stopped at another beach. We surprised and ultimately displaced a nude sunbather from a spot next to some limestone cliffs. A brief snorkel was enough to conclude that this beach had nothing new to see, and then we were almost displaced in turn by a dugite (a deadly snake) slithering though the rocks overhead. Fortunately no 
one got bitten despite some other tourists chasing it and poking at it with sticks. This behavior prompted us to be on our way. We rode back to the main settlement and caught the ferry back to Fremantle after a bite to eat. About halfway through the trip the waves picked up and started to break on the bridge above the passenger cabin. The captain called passengers off the upper deck. The main cabin started to leak, and the projectile vomiting began from some of the less stalwart passengers. We arrived shortly afterward in Fremantle none the worse for wear, but keen to get out of the reeking cabin.
My Mom was keen to drive in a foreign country but we both thought that baby steps were in order, so before her debut in a full size automobile we rented a Scoot car, which is basically a plastic bubble mounted on a backwards trike with training wheels and a windshield. I can’t explain why but these things are street legal, and looked to be the perfect way to introduce my Mom to Aussie rules driving. My Mom drove like a champ, but the episode was not without its more entertaining moments. When we showed up the proprietor of the establishment told us to be careful with the car because it was made in France, which meant it was cute, shoddily constructed, and exceedingly difficult to acquire parts for. He also didn’t relish speaking to the French on the phone. He said a typical conversation with the parts distributor went something like this: Bonjour......G’day mate!.......Bonjour?........Hello, do you speak Strayin?……Silence……….Do you speak English?...........Click……..followed by a dial tone. He then called the French “cheese eating surrender monkeys” admonished us not to take turns at more than 20 km/hr lest the car tip or we fall out, and wished us “Bon Voyage” before disappearing into his office.
During the rest of their vacation we did more things than I have space to write about, and very likely more things than you care to read about. The highlights included going to remote beaches as we worked our way along the southwest coast toward Cape Leeuwin. The Southern and Indian Oceans meet here, and the whole area is in the middle of a travel corridor for white pointers (Great white sharks). Unfortunately at Gracetown Beach we came across a memorial to a surfer who was taken by one there in 2004. Incidentally, Scarborough beach is part of the same corridor and a white pointer ate another guy right in front of some café patrons having their morning lattes about 2 miles south of where I live a couple years back, but nobody really likes to talk about that and I haven’t seen any white pointers yet. We toured the Margaret River wine country which has WA’s premier vineyards. Zach, Erin, and I paddled into a surf break in Yallingup, but we decided that the risk wasn’t worth it when we learned that many locals wear helmets in case they get thrown into a limestone reef that’s about a foot under the water’s 
surface just in front of the best waves. We saw wild kangaroos. We got up close to wombats, wallabies, Tasmanian devils, potteroos, walleroos, brush tail possums, and other native wildlife at a local wildlife park. We played Supagolf, which is like regular golf but with bigger clubs and balls. It’s a more forgiving variety of the game with all the fun and challenge, but without the pretense, cost, and cursing that often accompanies the regular version. It’s apparently made it to the US but I had never heard of it. If you get a chance to try it, I recommend you do. We accepted rides from strangers and lived to tell the tale. We watched fireworks on New Year’s Eve over the Indian Ocean, and my Mom nearly shot the windows out of a beachside concession stand with a champagne cork. It actually went over building and clanged its way to its current resting place atop the corrugated roof. It was fantastic.Photos:
1. Left to right: Zach, Erin, my Mom, and me at Kings Park
2. West side of Rotto
3. A quokka
4. Unidentified shipwreck, widely thought to be the Shark, a dredge that broke loose from its mooring in Fremantle in the 1930s and was never recovered (but no one knows for sure)
5. Coral off Rottnest
6. Chasing buff bream off Rottnest
7. Scoot car in Freo
8. Gracetown Beach, one of many perfect beaches with no one on them in SW Australia
9. My Mom gets close to a wild Western gray kangaroo
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