Kangaroo Island

Kangaroo Island is located off the coast of South Australia. It extends probably 100 km east-west and 50 km north-south. To get there, we have to fly from Sydney to Adelaide. Then we either have to make our way to the tip of a peninsula to take the ferry across or take a short flight. We chose the latter because we wanted to maximize our time on the island.

We woke up at 4:30 am to make the 6:30 flight from Sydney to Adelaide. Elisha was our gracious driver. There was a 45-minute delay on the ground so we arrived Adelaide late. We raced to the gate thinking we were there at the last minute but it turned out that South Australia is half an hour behind Sydney time – so we breathed a sigh of relief and grabbed coffee, where we met Kim for second time. (Kim is an American that sat next to us on the plane from San Francisco. She was visiting her boyfriend who was in Australia on business. They were considering to immigrating to Australia.) She and her boyfriend had spent time in Sydney and Adelaide and now were on their way to the northern coast. We exchanged big hugs and laughter that we met again so accidentally.

Our plane was a little Bombardier that held just 20 passengers and the flight took about 30 minutes. The KI airport is very small. After the arrival and departure of the passengers, it became deserted after all the service personnel left. But the airport building was open without any security. That reminded us of the good old days of air travel.

We rented a Toyota Rav 4 and drove nearly to the western end of the island where we had reserved a cabin at KI Caravan Park just outside the Flinders Chase National Park. It was tough driving on the right side of the road. Sally had to keep chanting “Look right, drive on the left…” over and over. I kept turning on the windshield wiper instead of the turn signal (they are on the opposite sides of the steering wheel than we used to).

KI is known for the presence of lots of kangaroos and wallabies. We were advised not to drive at dawn and dusk lest run the risk of hitting animals. They did come out at those times of the day. We saw lots of road kills which kept reminding me of a colleague who doesn't generally eat mammal meat, but will eat mammals that he killed (hunted ones and road kills, so he claimed).

The Caravan Park doubles as an informal wildlife preserve. Two short walks take you into a bit of eucalyptus forest and to Becky’s lagoon, a large freshwater pond with waterfowl, surrounded by the open meadow/pasture of an adjacent sheep ranch. We got lucky – on our first walk into the eucalyptus patch, we looked up and there was a koala about 30 ft off ground in the crotch of a tree. He was awake, staring at us, moving around, at one point shifting from one branch to another, hanging by his forelimbs and letting his hind legs dangle straight down like two furry poles.

Left: Our first koala in the wild.     Right: Two wallabies playing by the side of the road.

Also at the Caravan Park, we have been treated to wallabies (after dark, a couple dozen of them within 100 yards of our cabin’s front porch); a beautiful parrot-like bird called a Golah, with rosy breast, white bufflehead, and lovely gray back, that shuffled along on the lawn, picking at the ground. Also, many Australian magpies; and in the eucalyptus patch a lovely small bird with bright iridescent-blue head, striped with black eye patches, called the Superb Fairy Wren.

Left: Golah.     Right: Grazing kangaroos near our cabin.

Well, not quite ... They do hop away!

Flinders Chase National Park occupies the west end of the island. There are two destinations on the park's southwest tip – Remarkable Rocks and Admiral Arch. The former is a natural geologic formation of yellow and red (sandstone?), giant pieces like Calder stabiles up on a rock bluff overlooking the ocean, with holes, tunnels, crevices, windows, eroded shapes like a dinosaur jaw. One rock surface slanting back on the land side was creviced into a shape like a lizard with foot and claw extended.

The Admiral Arch is at the SW corner of the island where a series of islets has been created by erosion. Admiral Arch looks like the grotto of a cave, with projections dripping downward like stalactites but formed by erosion. The rocky shore is a haven for fur seals which draped themselves out for sunning and occasionally slid into the surf when a wave wet their way down. From a distance the fur seals have the same color and shape as our dark brown-gold slugs on the sidewalk on a wet day. They napped, occasionally arched their heads back, and flapped their tail flippers. One baby near his mom played with a piece of golden kelp, eventually got bored and humped his way over to the water and slid in. It seems suicidal to enter the water – it is all heavy surf on rocks. They must know to dive deep out of the breaking waves.

The next day we walked to the platypus lagoon in Flinders Chase National Park. It was a big disappointment - too hot and no wildlife. At the lagoon, we (and a few other people) stared into the murky waters for half an hour, kept quiet, tiptoed from one end of the platform to other to view different parts of the lagoon to find optimal platypus habitat – under that tree root? beneath that eroded bank? But nada.

We drove to Snake Lagoon Hike west of the visitors center and hiked down a well trodden path first through forest, then into rocky shoreline, about 10 km round trip. The track ends in a pocket cove of unspoiled white sand, pure ocean surf, looking south with no human structures in sight – no islands, no horizon, no airplanes, no freighters. The waves rolled in relentlessly, sweeping across the sand, very powerful. We took off shoes and socks and waded in to cool and soothe our feet.

Kelly Hill Cavern is about a 30 minute drive east of KI Caravan Park. We visited the caverns with a guide, in a group about 10. The tour lasts about 40 minutes and takes you to three or four “rooms”. The cave was formed by water seeping from an adjacent shore, wetland or lagoon with the water seeping laterally into a hillside rather than downward vertically into limestone. This limestone is very pure, meaning very white, although there is color variation – some parts are a gold or orange-brown, due to influence of plant tannins. The remarkable shapes include curving stalactites made by sheet flow of water from above.

Not quite so far east is a series of sand dunes ("Little Sahara" where the sport is sand sliding. We rented short boards (about 3 feet long) and walked from our car into the dune area. It is an aerobic sport because of slogging up the dunes each time you want to go down! Great conditioning activity before our hike next week! The dunes we attempted to surf down were maybe 25 to 30 ft high. There is a little technique involved. We chose to do the sit-down on the board version, not standing up like a snowboarder, although others visiting the dune area were trying to go down the dune standing on their boards. Lots of us took tumbles and got thoroughly doused with sand in hair, ears, a little gritting our teeth. Several folks (mostly in their 20s to 40s) were in an adventure tour group and arrived by bus with Aussie guide to show them boarding techniques.

Left: Looking down from the top.      Right: Arriving at the bottom.

We went to the Nocturnal Wildlife Walk at the Hansen Bay Nature Sanctuary. Our guide was a young woman, very well spoken and knowledgeable. It was completely dark as we left the café in a group of about 10, heading into rows of tall Tasmanian blue-gum that had been planted along his driveway by the farmer who owned the property until 1997 when it turned into nature reserve. Our guide and her assistant (who brought up the tail of our group and watched out for us) both carried high powered lanterns that they flashed quickly up, down, across parts of the tree canopies as we walked. They seemed able to spot wildlife by looking for little eyes flashing back, but they also were able to spot sleeping koalas curled up in gray furry bundles with no face or eyes visible.

Baby koala in the dark

We saw 4 or 5 koalas, of course wallabies hopping about everywhere, two or three ring tailed opossums (some of them were eating off the bird feeders), two brush-tailed opossums, a termite mound, and several grass-trees, which are not a tree but an extremely slow-growing grass that is fire resistant and only flowers once every 50 to 60 years, following a fire. The grass tree we were looking at had a trunk about a foot in diameter and four feet high, with the mound of grass blades at the top about 6 feet across and each blade 4 to six feet long. The termite mounds are a necessary part of the life cycle of the goanna, a lizard type of reptile. The female goanna makes a hole in the termite mound and deposits her eggs in the hole. The termites cover up the eggs which stay warm, develop and hatch into little goannas that stay in the mound eating lots of termites until they are large enough to eat themselves out and range freely. Scientists at this point think the termites get nothing out of this deal, but the goannas require this termite mound – some chemical in the mound is necessary for goanna baby development.

After 4 days in Kangaroo Island, we flew back to Sydney via Adelaide. Because we arrived late in the evening, we had to stay overnight in Adelaide. We didn't see much of the city, except Victoria Square in the city center and Chinatown right next to it.