Epic Round The World Trip Adventures! Stunning Photos & Articles - A fascinating gap year travel journal covering every stop of their journey.

Rockingham - West Australia
Gap Year Travel Journal

(10th March) Rockingham - Penguin Island
We spent a day at Rockingham (and it's not a silent "h"!) which is a resort about a half hour south of Fremantle. The bay is very shallow and some people braved a chest deep walk through the sea along a sand bar across to Penguin Island. We decided to be lazy and caught a ferry to see the stars of the show the Little Penguins (otherwise also know as Fairy Penguins or Blue Penguins). They are silvery grey/blue in colour and the smallest of the penguin species at 12" high. You only get to see the ones that have been rescued or born in the centre as the main colony is on a protected part of the island, but we did get to see them being fed anchovies. We did a boat trip around the bay to Seal Island where we saw some sea-lions sleeping on the beach. Our boat skipper made barking noises to them and tried to convince us that they recognised his bark - one of them did look up but didn't seem too fussed! We were lucky enough to see a dolphin swimming around and it even swam under the boat a few times. Later in the day we went for a stroll at Point Peron headland where we saw 4 dolphins swimming around the shores feeding, one of which had a calf. You can windsurf at Safety bay, but Mike wasn't very impressed as it is so weedy at this particular beach that you need a special fin to sail here and the wind is usually dead on shore which isn't ideal.