Australia is vast, and that is especially apparent when traveling along its west coast. My partner’s family live in Perth, so I am lucky to have visited several times, but never for long. Thankfully, I was able to spend several weeks in Australia during my sabbatical and loved how separated it felt from the rest of the world.
Perth is uniquely situated alongside the Indian Ocean, and despite being an urban centre, the beaches, wetlands and hills surrounding the city make it feel closer to nature than most other cities I have visited.
After the long flight there, I was understandably desperate to get off the plane. The first thing I always like to do is to stretch my legs with a walk around a lake near where my in-laws live (with my binoculars around my neck!) and remind myself how unique Australian wildlife is.
The wetland birds are similar in size, but different enough that you feel like you’re somewhere special – I love the distinct beaks of the pink-eared ducks, and the vibrant colouring of the Australian shelduck. But my personal favourite is the Australian white ibis, who have developed a remarkable resilience to their urban surroundings. Affectionately named ‘bin chickens’ (which I feel says a lot about the Australian attitude to life!), due to being regularly found diving into trash, their determination to make the best of a situation can only be applauded.
Perth is the gateway for travel along Australia’s stunning west coastline. Over the course of several weeks, I travelled up and down the coast, by car and by boat, experiencing all that it had to offer me – from Wedge Island, where emus and kangaroos live alongside a small beach-front settlement, to north of Esperance, where my excitement at sighting a Wedge-tailed eagle nearly caused me to crash the car!
I was also able to go on some amazing hikes, including the Bald Head Trail just outside of Albany, that takes you to what feels like the precipice of the world, along a narrow peninsula jutting out into the Great Australian Bight. The views on the hike were breathtaking, made even more impressive by the binoculars I used to see dolphins swimming off the cliffs below. The pod accompanied us from a distance, but the binoculars made it feel like there was barely any space between us.
Spotting dolphins was a common theme of our trip – from common dolphins off the coast of Albany (photographed trying to eagerly spot them below) to the well-known pod of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins that that inhabit the canals and waterways of Mandurah, just south of Perth.
There are plenty of opportunities for mammal spotting in Australia – a highlight for any mammal enthusiast that visits Western Australia has to be Rottnest Island – there was no way I would be able to write a blog about my sabbatical without including it!
Just off the coast of Perth, and accessible by a short ferry journey, is a particularly special island, where one of the world’s distinctly unique – and perhaps happiest – species lives, the quokka. Found only in southern Western Australia, quokkas faced a significant reduction in range on the mainland since the introduction of non-native predatory and is now classified as vulnerable by the IUCN.
However, they are thankfully abundant on Rottnest Island, where most predation has been removed. Any visitors to the island are sure to see these curious marsupials, and I was thankfully no exception. The island also boasts impressive snorkelling spots, where you can spend your time with a variety of tropical fish, and if you’re lucky, some reef sharks!
My time in Australia was spent embracing the varied and different environments to what I am typically used to, learning more about the fantastic species that call this area home. I got to glimpse kangaroos from the roadside, spot cockatoos tucked away in trees and even heard the iconic kookaburra’s laugh – yet I barely scratched the surface of what Australia has to offer. There’s a lot more to explore and I can only hope that spending more time in this wonderful country is in my future.