Rottnest Island Travel Guide

An easy 25-minute cruise from Fremantle, or about 1 hour down the Swan River from Perth, sunny, quirky Rottnest Island makes an ideal day trip. The island has an interesting past. Though records of human occupation date back 6,500 years, when Aboriginal people inhabited the area, European settlement only dates back to 1829. Since then the island has been used for a variety of purposes, including attempts at agriculture, as a boy's reformatory, and for military purposes in both the Great War and World War II. The Rottnest Museum is a great place to get the history of the place, and you can take a train trip and tour to Oliver Hill to see gun emplacements from World War II.