Where will you go first - Rottnest Island or Kangaroo Island?

By Mal Chenu

It's a good thing the editor didn't ask Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh to write this piece about Rottnest Island. Firstly, he's dead, but what's more important, except perhaps to Will, is that he thought the quokkas who live on Rottnest were giant rats, and named the island accordingly.

"Rats' Nest Island" is not exactly an advertiser's dream name. It would hardly rank as a sought-after public relations destination account, unless your PR firm has just lost Tourism Wuhan and was looking for a comparable challenge.

"Plagued by doubt about your next holiday? Come to Rats' Nest - our wildlife encounters are infectious!"

Australians love to shorten place names and confer a "Strayan" slang twang, and so Rottnest Island is known to sandgropers as "Rotto", a contraction that no doubt would have impressed Vlamo. Anyhooo, as we now know, Rotto's "rats" turned out to be quokkas - uber-cute, small, smiling wallabies who are the world's most-loved selfie subjects. Quintessentially quirky and inquisitive, quokkas are the darlings of Instagram and have posed with celebs such as Chris Hemsworth, Shawn Mendes, Margot Robbie, Roger Federer and Logan Paul. Quokkumentaries have been made about this photogenic marsupial marvel.

Quokkas have achieved the sort of social media exposure most influencers can only dream of. Western Australia's richest horse race is called "The Quokka", proof that even other animals want to ride the trend and figure in a photo.

Such is the pre-eminence of the quokka that Rotto's other wildlife offerings are sometimes overlooked. Bottlenose dolphins are regular visitors to Thomson Bay, where the ferries dock.

The island is also one of the best places in Australia for whale watching, with humpbacks, southern rights and even blue whales passing by at various times of the year. Rotto is also home to colonies of Australian sea lions and apparently disoriented New Zealand fur seals. Rottnest is a twitcher's delight, too, identified by conservation group BirdLife International as an "Important Bird Area". It supports crucial breeding populations of fairy terns, banded stilts, wedge-tailed shearwaters and red-necked stints, all of which I presume are types of birds.

I know Amy is on the other side of the page waxing lyrical about Kangaroo Island and its possums and dunnarts and seals. Oh my! But let's not forget we're comparing Rotto's 19 square kilometres with KI's 4405 square kilometres. That's like comparing the area of Australia with Samoa or Hong Kong. And with due regard to their respective endemic wildlife - Samoa's tooth-billed pigeon and Hong Kong's duty-free shopper - they ain't no quokkas!

Pound for pound, unique for unique, selfie for selfie, Rotto trumps KI.

By Amy Cooper

Just like Rotto, KI has a name that seriously undersells the experience. Calling this wildlife wonderland Kangaroo Island is like calling Bunnings a screwdriver shop.

Roos are just one star in KI'S ongoing Oscars of all Australia's celebrity critters, including koalas, bats, tammar wallabies, possums, echidnas, goannas, sea lions, pelicans, whales, penguins, raptors, dolphins and the world's only pure-bred population of the Ligurian honey bee. There are more than 250 bird species and a supporting cast of 1000-plus plant species, of which at least 60 are unique to the island. KI is also a fungi fancier's paradise, with hundreds of rare varieties.

One-third of KI's 4405 square kilometres is national park and nearly half the island retains uncleared native vegetation, preserving pristine, millennia-old ecosystems.

For the inadequate name we can thank explorer Matthew Flinders, who saw only dinner when he landed in 1802. KI's western grey kangaroos hadn't learnt to fear horrid Homo sapiens, and Matt and his crew found the friendly locals such an easy feed they devoured 31 in three days and named the island for its marsupial menu. I guess we can feel fortunate they didn't call it Sizzler.

Fortunately, we've since learnt to protect KI's precious fauna and now, just a 45-minute ferry ride across from the Fleurieu Peninsula, Australia's largest island is also one of its top spots for encountering native animals (without chucking them on the barbie). Around 10 per cent of Australia's endangered sea lion population call KI home and hang out on the golden sands of Seal Bay. From a 900-metre wheelchair-friendly beach boardwalk you can see them lounge, frolic and occasionally flop down right beside you.

At the 2000-hectare Hanson Bay Wildlife Sanctuary on KI's western end, you can take a nocturnal tour of the island's wild nightlife: with koalas, bats, possums, echidnas and more on the move, it's busier than a Saturday night in Bangkok. Swim with big, busy pods of wild dolphins off KI's north shore, spot southern right whales in season, see little penguins at Penneshaw, long-nosed fur seals at Admirals Arch in Flinders Chase National Park, or follow the five-day Kangaroo Island Wilderness Trail, now a fascinating journey through the island's regeneration following the devastating 2019-20 bushfires. And there's KI's answer to the quokka: the critically endangered Kangaroo Island dunnart. Equally cute but much less extrovert, the publicity-shy little marsupial is more Keanu than Kardashian. Which makes a sighting all the sweeter.

Sure, you can quokka round the clock at Rotto, but if you want a fabulous feast of fauna (and not in the Matthew Flinders way), hop on over to Kangaroo Island.

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