State Government’s bid to make WA’s Rottnest Island a global destination and tourist hot spot

Almost three-quarters of a million people visit Rottnest Island every year, generating about $60 million in revenue. But the State Government is not resting on its laurels in its bid to make WA tourism’s “jewel in the crown” a truly global destination. The number of visitors who came to the island in 2022-23 increased to a record 730,000, with about 80 per cent of them day trippers. Revenue increased from $31.4 million in 2014-15 to $56.8m last financial year, after recovering from a COVID-inflicted slump. About $25m of that revenue comes from accommodation, much of which is State Government-run. But now the “post-pandemic” tourism bounce is gaining added momentum. Tourism Minister Rita Saffioti is so confident visitor numbers will keep increasing, she’s backing the addition of new activities and facilities. “It’s an absolute jewel in the crown: an incredible tourist asset,” Ms Saffioti told The Sunday Times. “So I want to continue to grow Rottnest’s visibility around the world.” UNRELENTING DEMAND Rottnest is a unique holiday hotspot, famed for its army of fearless quokkas, who appear unfazed to be surrounded by tourists. Add to that a wide array of wildlife, including the chip-hungry seagulls at the Rottnest Hotel who are among the island’s 100 different bird species, and you have a place where nature lovers can be in their element. The absence of motorised vehicles, other than the hop-on, hop-off bus, and ranger and island authority cars and trucks, means tourist can wander the island in relative peace, only having to keep an ear out for the ringing of bicycle bells — the No.1 transport choice. Exploration by bicycle is part of Rottnest’s charm, with people roaming all corners of the 19sqkm island looking for the best beaches to swim at or a picturesque scene. Increasingly known by its Aboriginal name, Wadjemup, the island has been a popular destination for school camps for decades, and an attractive holiday option for those wanting an escape that’s just 21km from Fremantle, with the ferry ride from the port city taking about 30 minutes. And it’s a must-do for many visiting celebrities, with men’s world No.1 tennis player Novak Djokovic — who arrived by helicopter last month — among the latest to get their mandatory quokka selfie, although the popular practice is discouraged. Deborah Taylor, visitor services director for the State Government’s Rottnest Island Authority, said visitor demand had been “relentless” since WA re-opened to the world post-COVID, recalling how Rotto was turned into a quarantine facility for cruise ship passengers in 2020 at the height of the pandemic. Since then numbers had been increasing fast, with school holiday periods the island’s busiest. She said Rotto recorded its busiest-ever day on December 29 last year. “That period between Christmas and January 30, if you haven’t got a bike by 9am, put your sneakers on — you’re walking today,” Ms Taylor said. Jody McDonald, manager of bike and snorkelling equipment hire business Pedal and Flipper, said workers were “definitely experiencing our busiest summer ever” as West Australians rediscovered their own “backyard”, where they could relax and wander around with sandy feet. To accommodate the unprecedented influx of people, more staff have been put on and the bike-hire fleet increased, including the addition of e-bikes and e-scooters. RESIDENT WORKFORCE At full capacity during peak season, up to 500 workers live on the island. Tourist accommodation totals about 2500 beds, day-tripper numbers can reach 3000 and about 5000 people are on boats anchored in crystal blue waters offshore, or at rented moorings. But staff who live on the island are backed up by “thousands more commuting daily”, Ms Taylor said. The island’s director of environment, heritage and park services, Arvid Hogstrom, said that during the winter months, the number of workers living on the island reduced to between 100 and 150, and only 50-60 staff lived there all year. He’s one of the lucky few who call Rottnest home, along with his partner Claire Smallwood and their two children Clancy, 9, and Nelly, 7. Mr Hogstrom said his posting for the past two-and-a-half years had been a “once-in-a-lifetime” dream job, and his children loved it. “They’re thriving from a learning and lifestyle point of view,” Mr Hogstrom said. The children are among a dozen who are educated on the island by a branch of the mainland’s Beaconsfield Primary School, with the ages ranging from pre-primary to Year 6. There’s one teacher and one teacher’s assistant, so the children get plenty of one-on-one attention, and enjoy a wide range of outdoor activities the moment they step out of class, including helping with beach clean-ups. “It’s not unusual for us to come home from school in the afternoon and then take the tough option of going for a walk down the beach with the fishing rods and try to catch a couple of herrings for dinner,” Mr Hogstrom said. “We spend a lot of time snorkelling. And more recently getting the kids into things like surfing and diving. “There are 60 bays and beaches around the island at your beck and call. “Everyone understands it’s a privilege to be here. “I’ve got the most magnificent office in Perth”. UNIQUE COMMUTE Max Wood, 18, is working at Pedal and Flipper over summer and plans to study at university before returning for the next peak season. He lives in Sorrento and catches the ferry at Hillarys, a free daily commute for the island’s workers that usually takes about 45 minutes. “It gets really busy sometimes. We’ve sold out of bikes a couple of times,” he said. “It’s a pretty good job. There’s no dramas. Everyone’s very nice and there’s all the people from other countries (among staff). All the cultures are different. “There’s two people from France, one from Spain. Joanna’s from Germany.” The summer mix of backpacker tourists is also varied, with Brits Flo Caddy, Anna Caldswell, Lilly Atkinson and their German-South African friend Lisa Hustaedt telling The Sunday Times as they stood outside the island’s famous bakery they had been to Australia’s east coast, but rated WA as the best place to visit. Then there’s the Perth parents who fondly remember “Rotto” from their youth and want their children to have the same experience. Belinda Prentice grew up visiting twice a year — winter and summer —and is now taking her daughters Lily, 12, and Florence, 11, biannually. Lily’s long-term friend Cleo Steele described Rottnest as “the perfect holiday” with its clear ocean — rating it better than Greece — while her brother Freddie, 8, likened it to the Maldives. OFF-PEAK PUSH The key to Rottnest’s future is to convince visitors to be like the Prentices and embrace its joys in the cooler months, smoothing out demand beyond the chock-a-block summer period, so running a business on the island is more sustainable, Tourism Council of WA chief executive Evan Hall argues. Mr Hall said the weather around Perth was “brilliant even in May”, noting that the huge driver of the summer rush was school holidays. “Western Australians have incredible spikes in demand. They essentially all want to go to the same parts of Western Australia at the same time,” he said. “Around the school holiday periods, we are inundated with demand that we would never have the capacity to meet for everyone, and then a couple of weeks later, it’s crickets. “And then we’ve still got to cover the costs of resorts, transport connections for staff and so on. The industry works on bringing in international visitors and interstate visitors when we’re not busy. “When we have low occupancy, the rates drop incredibly.” Grey nomads were among the smart ones, Mr Hall said, wisely “waiting for the families to go home”. Ms Saffioti agreed that off-peak visitation was a priority, but said visitors were starting to wise up, meaning the busy season was starting earlier and ending later. Heavily subsidised or free camps for the State’s most disadvantaged schools was part of the plan to broaden the island’s off-season appeal, she said. LODGINGS The State Government-owned accommodation is mainly heritage cottages that, despite appearing a bit run-down, remain popular with families because of their affordability and charm. After being redeveloped in the late 1980s, the landmark Lodge hotel wound up with fewer rooms and it wasn’t until 2019 that Rottnest got new accommodation, with the addition of glamping facilities behind the dunes of Pinky’s Beach. Then came Samphire, where the swankiest beachfront suite costs more than $1600 a night around Christmas and $700 a night in winter. Island authority chairman Hamish Beck said quality accommodation was “really important for our national and international markets”, but West Aussies “absolutely love our rustic accommodation”. In the 30 years between the major redevelopments at Rottnest, Perth’s population has almost doubled to more than 2.1m, but the amount of accommodation, according to Mr Beck, “hasn’t really changed”. He said the island could support more, but it would be “some years” before that happened — and nothing would be outside the existing settled areas, with protecting the class-A nature reserve the top priority. The focus would largely be on “renewing what we’ve got rather than massively expanding”, he said. Units at South Thomson were recently refurbished for the first time in about 30 years, getting the complete “re-tiled, re-kitchened” treatment, Mr Beck said. “And then we’re planning this winter to undertake the same sort of thing through Geordie Bay and Longreach — much-needed.” Ms Saffioti said the focus for new accommodation would be affordability, confirming that Governors Circle was an established area being looked at, but the island was not going to be “built up”. RIVERS OF GOLD? While the near-doubling in revenue over the past eight years sounds like a big money earner for the State Government, most goes back into maintaining, repairing and running aging facilities and infrastructure, including the island’s jetties. The dangers of not upgrading facilities was clear when after decades of funding neglect, part of the Army Jetty collapsed while five relatives were fishing in 2018, sending three of them into the water, including an 11-year-old boy who was knocked unconscious, while a woman was trapped under concrete rubble. It was demolished and turned into a groyne, then the Fuel Jetty was reconstructed and modernised. But the major turning point was a recent $30m election funding commitment, which is being used to upgrade roads and overhaul the island’s water pipes, which Ms Saffioti described as no longer fit for purpose. Unusually, the RIA has had to take care of water, sewerage and providing power through diesel generation, but this onerous responsibility was now being transitioned to Water Corporation and Horizon Power. There is a 70 per cent renewable energy target over five years, and Mr Beck says the “transfer of utilities will be completely transformative”. For those who have questioned Rottnest’s prices, Mr Beck points out that the island’s harsh elements, including sea salt, meant maintenance was a challenge, and materials cost 35-38 per cent more because they had to be transported by barge. ROOM TO IMPROVE Mr Hall said the RIA had done a “really good job” over the past five years, boosted by the cash injection to upgrade the island from feeling “like a ‘70s rundown school camp” to a modern getaway. “Now it’s a lot closer to what people would expect from an experience,” he said. “We’ve wanted the offerings improved, particularly the maintenance and the infrastructure — the basics — as well as better experiences for a long time. “And they’ve been doing that and doing it well, in a pretty complex environment.” There were now three ferry service providers, which had increased competition, and most recently the addition of activities such as parasailing had filled a gap for families with teenagers. The addition of a kids’ club was also a major improvement. “Some people want to come over and flop on the beach and others want to be really active,” Mr Hall said. There is, of course, still more to improve, Mr Hall said, given there were other compelling options attracting West Aussie tourist dollars. “A lot of people will pick a resort in Bali because they’ve got the kids’ club, and that means the parents can have some time,” he said. “Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines — Western Australians will head out. They will go to the water parks, they will go to the surf parks. “We’ve just got to have a diversity of accommodation offerings and things to do.” Off-season events were another must, he said. DELICATE BALANCE The evolution of Rottnest was deliberately not rushed, Mr Hogstrom said, with managing the island’s unique ecological assets and cultural heritage a delicate and carefully thought-out balancing act. It involved closely monitoring “pressure points” as Rottnest’s settled footprint slowly grew. It also meant having to be “ready for change” to adjust accordingly, ensuring those precious values were protected. “Rotto is a complex organisation,” Mr Hogstrom said. Efforts around Rottnest’s grim history were being handled particularly delicately, he said. The island was a jail for thousands of Aboriginal men and boys from 1838 until 1904, then a forced labour camp for low-risk Fremantle Prison inmates until 1931. It was also an internment camp during both world wars. And it was used in between those wars as a campground where thousands of tourists unknowingly pitched their tents on the unmarked graves of at least 373 Aboriginal prisoners, to the north of the main prison building known as the Quod. RIA says the future of the burial ground and Quod will be determined by State-wide consultation under the Wadjemup Project, which aims to formally acknowledge the island’s Aboriginal history through truth telling and ceremony. JUGGLING ACT Ms Taylor gave an insight into the huge logistics involved in running Rottnest, describing juggling the whole operation as “like a finely tuned game of Tetris”. A major strategy is “block booking” a minimum of two nights during peak periods, giving huge teams of luggage handlers and cleaners a breather from guest changeovers. Each year, wild weather completely prevents ferries from crossing for 10 or 11 days. And when that is forecast to happen — keenly monitored by ferry operators — staff spring into action, advising guests they either need to leave before it hits or stay an extra day. They get a discount, of course, as do guests who were inbound but had their plans foiled.