Travelling to Kangaroo Island was long and very tiring - it is Australia's third largest island, located just south of Adelaide - but we were rewarded as soon as we set foot on the island.
To begin, we woke up at 4 a.m. to be at the Auckland airport by 6 a.m. for our 8 a.m. flight. We arrived in Adelaide five hours later and had to wait nearly seven hours for the half-hour flight to Kangaroo Island. We decided to grab two taxis into Adelaide where we visited the Tandanya National Aboriginal Center. We viewed some aboriginal art and attended a brief cultural performance that included the didgeridoo (a 1.5 meter long piece of wood, hollowed out by termites, which sounds like nothing else you have heard before.) We ate a Thai lunch and practiced boomerang throwing at a local playground in the sun. We then headed back to the airport.
The airport is pleasant but we were confused by one of their signs:
The first part makes sense – it is entirely eco-friendly and sensible to reuse water. But why do they need to tell people to not drink the toilet water? Or are we missing something? (They also had signs suggesting that people shouldn’t spit into the trash cans – although we wish that suggestion was not necessary, at least one can imagine the possible need for that warning.)
After landing in Kangaroo Island, we picked up the car and quickly darted over to the grocery store where we had 45 minutes to shop for six days worth of food for six people. We were staying in the remote western end of the island and we didn’t want to drive 90 kms for a liter of milk! We filled two shopping trolleys and had a fright when our credit card did not work. Fortunately, the second one did. At this point, it was 7 p.m. Kangaroo Island time (9:30 p.m. NZ time – weird, a 2.5 hour difference) as we piled into the car starving and exhausted to begin the 75-minute journey to Hanson Bay. But let the fun begin! The drive included MANY animal sightings including over a dozen possums, some wallabies and a few kangaroos out rummaging around in the bright moonlight.
We collapsed after dinner, but everyone was up early and eager to explore. The children went out to look around the property. Soon, they returned with reports of a koala sighting. We joined the kids and ended up seeing about six koalas, a small herd of kangaroos, some wallabies, several different kinds of birds including Cape Barren geese, and an echidna, a porcupine-like mammal who lays eggs like the platypus!
Later in the morning, we drove to the Flinders Chase National Park Visitors’ Center, got our Kangaroo Island Park Pass and took a walk to Remarkable Rocks, one of the few spots open in the park since the devastating wildfires that swept across the island in early December. The rocks are beautifully sculpted granite boulders with bright orange highlights sitting atop a cliff near the sea. The weather was sunny and warm, the setting was gorgeous and the children were thrilled to be able to climb, crawl, slide down and tumble across the rocks.
We ate a picnic lunch by the lighthouse and then walked down to Admiral’s Arch, a cradled cave-like cove with stalactites overlooking a bay loaded with New Zealand fur seals. Enroute, we crossed paths with a heath goanna, a good-sized native lizard who was on an afternoon stroll. Even though we saw many seals on our New Zealand South Island trip, we enjoyed watching them swim playfully in the surf and at times, bicker more than our children. Not bad for our first 24 hours.
In the early evening, we went on a nocturnal walk at Hanson Bay Sanctuary where we were staying in the “homestead”. We were able to see yet more koalas, wallabies, kangaroos and possums. A special treat was being able to hand feed and pet a young female kangaroo named Amy. We even got to see her joey bouncing around in her belly. The stars were out in full force and we even watched a satellite glide over head (our first confirmed satellite sighting).
On Thursday, everyone woke up much too early, but we did get to see the sky turn from black to pink to blue. Beth sat outside admiring the birds while drinking her coffee. The boys set out to find more animals just after breakfast. The Cape Barren geese were honking in the distance, the magpies were whistling their circus organ song, the parrots were squawking and lots of tiny, colorful birds we don’t know were tweeting and darting around the shrubs.
Later that morning, we drove to the Snake Lagoon trailhead in the hopes of finding a platypus in the Snake River. The forest suffered badly from the forest fires in December. Most of the trails in Flinders Chase Park were closed, including the platypus waterholes hike. We walked through the black scarred trees to the river where we found a platypus, but unfortunately, it was dead and decomposing. The trail continued down through a gorge with caves and curious rocks which then led to a beautiful ocean bay. The children played for awhile on the rocks and in the river before we started back. On the way back to the carpark, the kids found a tawny dragon lizard under a rock.
After lunch, we drove over to Hanson Bay for a couple hours and relished a pure white sand beach with crystal clear turquoise water. It was dreamy. In the late afternoon, Beth took a walk in the Koala Sanctuary. Isaac and Gerard joined her later. We got to have some close-up encounters with yet more wallabies, koalas and kangaroos.
On Friday, we went to see Australian sea lions at Seal Bay. We did the beach tour with a ranger so we were able to observe them closely. Most of them were sleeping; however, there was a little action. Two bulls had a spat, some young pups whined after their mums, a few surfed the waves. Unlike New Zealand fur seals, they don’t stink and they have a varied coloring.
Also, at Seal Bay, we saw the skeleton of a beached young humpback whale and a very cavalier echidna. He was lumping along, focused on finding his “formicable” feast and very casually trod over Gerard’s shoes. The Kangaroo Island echidna has unique blond spikes and even though he is a spiny creature, his calm and approachable demeanor makes him endearing.
After Seal Bay, we traveled to Parndana Wildlife Park. We ate a picnic lunch, then strolled around the property admiring the vast collection of Australian animals. There were many birds on display, some of them incredibly colorful and others very entertaining. The children particularly enjoyed interacting with a talking and dancing cockatiel while Mom found the “attack ducks” hysterical. There were two ducks in the aviary that snapped and screamed at everyone who passed by. The highlight was the Kangaroo Island kangaroo enclosure where Xavier, Quentin, Annick and Isaac got to feed, pet and even cuddle with kangaroos. We had fun!
On the way home, we stopped by the “Little Sahara” sand dunes to see if we should hire some sandboards. It looked awesome and we made plans to return. Before dinner, Beth and Gerard made a tour of the Koala Sanctuary and found a sleepy koala only about 6 feet up in a young eucalyptus tree. We relished seeing him so closely and resisted the very strong temptation to pick him up and bring him home.
The weather turned rainy on Saturday and so we were slow to decide how we should organize our day. We stopped at the Visitors’ Center and let the kids dig in the fossil pit for awhile. Then, we piled in the car to figure out if we were headed to the Borda Lighthouse and cliff walk or to Paul’s Place, another wildlife sanctuary. We chose Paul’s Place and it turned out to be a good decision.
Paul’s Place is not just a wildlife park, but a two-to three-hour Australian wildlife entertainment production on a simple farm-like property in the middle of nowhere. We bumped along a dirt road for about 40 minutes and found a small crowd of people hanging out at the property gate. Paul ushered us in and led us on an animal odyssey that included the following:
Paul had a riotous sense of humour and added some special extra antics like pouring birdfeed on a man’s head and surprising him with an emu that pecked wildly at the poor man’s scalp. We enjoyed it a lot, but it ended up being more than we imagined. It was 3:30 p.m. and we hadn’t even eaten lunch yet!
After finding a place to wash our hands and eat, we drove over to “Little Sahara” to walk on the sand dunes. We had hoped to go sandboarding, but it was getting late and the rain kept coming with heavy, intermittent showers, so the sand was wet and sticky. We walked around on the dunes, soaking in the view and noticing that the air had gotten much more chilly. Suddenly, a large group of young adults with sandboards arrived. The boys saw that the sandboards do work on wet sand, so we made plans to return on Sunday to have a go.
It rained all night Saturday night into Sunday morning with some very heavy downpours. In fact, on Sunday morning, we had a fifteen-minute hailstorm. The big boys left for the sand dunes to try their luck at sandboarding while Beth stayed home with the twins.
After lunch, we were scheduled to take a tour of Kelly Caves. Our introduction to the caves was a 40-minute show cave tour. We learned about the history of the cave and what makes it unique. We have been to a few caves before, but this one was the most elegant. The stalactites were often pencil-thin and many of them turned sideways or curved upwards. There were calcified tree roots and many shades of ivory and amber. After the show cave tour, we went adventure caving. With a guide and three other people, we went spelunking. We ventured deeper into the cave, requiring some climbing and crawling. At times, the spaces were so small that we had to drag our flatten bodies along, pulling with our arms and pushing with our feet like beached seals. Beth was glad that this was our final activity. We were dusty dirtballs when we exited the cave. It was an exciting outing and the children wished it had lasted longer. Beth enjoyed it, but prefers being underwater to being underground.
More Kangaroo Island photos:
 |
| Kangaroo Island |
