Favourite island in the stream

Visitors to Rottnest Island can check out the Wadjemup Hill lighthouse.

West Australians love to boast of Rottnest Island's Mediterranean-like climate, and on a glorious day with the sun glinting off a turquoise-blue Indian Ocean it would be hard to argue with them.

In beautiful Geordie Bay, the sand-coloured cottages have a definite European flavour.

Rottnest, known as the "people's island", is a Class A reserve, a half-hour ferry ride from Fremantle near the West Australia capital of Perth.

The publicly funded Rottnest Island Authority runs most of the businesses and accommodation including self-catering cottages, villas, a camping ground and youth hostel and the dormitory-style Kingstown Barracks.

At peak school holiday times, beds are so sought-after there's a public ballot to make sure everyone gets a fair go. For shorter stays and tourists, the privately run Quokka Arms and Rottnest Lodge provide hotel and apartment-style accommodation.

Rottnest, or "Rotto" as the Aussies inevitably call it, holds a special place in the hearts of West Australians who have swum, snorkelled and surfed in its beautiful bays for generations.

One of the stand-out features for the first-time visitor is the absence of cars. Instead, the vast majority of day-trippers and overnight visitors use pedal power. Rottnest is just 11km long by 4.5km wide, so if you are even mildly fit a bike will get you most places you might want to go, whether it's the Wadjemup Hill lighthouse with its 360deg views of the ocean and mainland or one of the more than 70 bays and beaches where the sea is deep turquoise and clear as glass.

The roads are extremely well kept and the slopes mostly gentle, and you can either bring your own bike over on the ferry or hire one from the 1800 or more available - $15-$20 will get you one for the day, including helmet.

It's not just the climate that draws the 500,000 day-trippers and 100,000 over-nighters here each year, according to tour bus driver Bert Genat. Rottnest lies in the middle of the Leeuwin current, which means the water here is a couple of degrees warmer than nearer the mainland.

He calls me over during a stop at Eagle Bay on the western shore to point out what look like brown lumps bobbing in the ocean. A mine of information on everything about Rottnest, from its exotic wildlife and birds to the towering wind turbine that seems to appear on the horizon wherever you go, Genat tells me the lumps are New Zealand sealions, waving their flippers in the air to cool down.

Suspecting a bit of good old Aussie leg-pulling, I squint into the distance but can't see any flipper-waving. Genat insists I wave back anyway.

Like other cities around the world with a favourite island retreat on their doorstep, just about anything that happens on Rotto is news. Today, a sleek and expensive motorboat is wallowing in shallow water, having come to grief on one of the island's treacherous reefs the night before. It's not the first shipwreck here and won't be the last, but a television news crew has choppered in anyway, keen for a story on this West Australian long holiday weekend.

Their arrival was to be expected, says Rottnest staffer Claire Wright, a thirtysomething blonde with a no-nonsense manner and dry sense of humour, whose job as Rottnest's environmental manager means she's been exposed to the Aussie media more than most.

The time she took on the powerful boating lobby over the emptying of boat toilets too close to shore was a recent highlight. "They nicknamed me the 'poo princess' after that," she says.

Rottnest's role as a wildlife sanctuary is something the authority takes much more seriously in these environmentally aware times.

From the late 1900s when day-trippers first started visiting regularly on the Sunday ferry, Rottnest was in danger of becoming just another favourite spot for New Year's Eve revellers. By the 1970s only 7 per cent of its native vegetation remained.

The public and conservationists demanded action and in the 1980s the state Government set up and funded the authority to help preserve the island's wildlife and return it to a more natural state.

Luckily, there was a ready-made mascot for the campaign. The quokka looks at first sight like a small, hunch-backed wallaby but is the last-remaining member of a separate genus, or family.

In a roundabout way it gave Rottnest its name. When Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh sailed by in 1696 he thought the island was teeming with "a kind of rat as big as a common cat". Hence the name Rotte's nest or rat's nest.

The quokka has had a tough time of it since that early unflattering description. Populations have been decimated by foxes and other introduced predators and its habitat has gradually disappeared. Once widespread throughout southwest Australia, they are now largely confined to small pockets on the mainland and some islands. Rottnest is their biggest stronghold where they number between 8000 and 12,000.

Mostly nocturnal, quokkas have become fairly tame after years of legal protection, but today Genat, the bus driver, is having trouble finding one. After a couple of false starts he finally locates a sleepy looking individual curled up under a low-lying shrub. It wakes just long enough for the cameras to click then goes back to sleep in the warm midday sun.

While the quokka tends to get the most attention wildlife-wise on Rottnest, all species here are strictly protected. Notable residents include the majestic osprey and a number of reptiles including the "moaning frog". The osprey are something of a passion for Genat, who points out their huge nests along the southern coast.

Wright oversees the planting programmes on Rottnest. Native seed is grown in nurseries until the seedlings are big enough to be planted by small armies of volunteers and schoolchildren.

The island also has some ambitious sustainability programmes, including reducing waste by 93 per cent and becoming more self-sufficient in energy. The 47m-high wind turbine, which sparked one of the hottest public debates of recent times, has helped reduce dependence on fossil fuels such as oil and diesel by 50 per cent.

There's a host of things to do on Rottnest, from the octagonal "Quod" left from its days as a penal colony to the Rottnest Museum and Salt Store to art galleries.

A two-hour coach tour will tell you almost everything you could want to know about the island, but a Bayseeker bus will let you can jump on and off at 16 different stops for A$7 ($8.40) a day. There are also boat charter trips, including some to shipwrecks accessible to snorkellers. The Rottnest shipwreck trail tells the stories of the 14 shipwrecks found off the island's coast with information plaques on the sea floor.

Rottnest has a railway which can take you on a tour of the Oliver Hill gun and tunnel system built to ward off attack during World War II.

If none of that appeals, there are guided walks or you can simply wander among the historic buildings at Rottnest settlement then relax over coffee at the aptly-named Quokka Arms looking out over Thomson Bay.

For visitors based in Perth, the best way to get to Rottnest, and an ideal day trip, is to buy a ticket at Barrack St jetty that includes a slow boat ride down the Swan River to Fremantle where ferries to Rottnest leave regularly for the island.

* Anne Beston travelled to Rottnest Island courtesy of Tourism Western Australia.