Kangaroo Island
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The star show was pretty good but not the best we’ve seen, even here in Oz. Too much moisture in the air I think. Anyway, morning came pretty early since we were up late last night doing web logging, and we wanted to make sure we had time to see everything, so no sleeping in.
I was headed to the bathroom this morning and just outside the door was a 5 foot kangaroo just standing there. It didn’t run off when it saw me like they usually do and I was able to get his picture. Then he ran off. He’s the biggest one I’ve seen and a bit surprising to bump into like that.
Warm and sunny again today, and not much wind. So we went over to the beach again for a swim. Well, Les actually went fully in. I just waded. It was only 2 feet deep anyway :-). Another walk through the rock tunnel. It’s so cool.
We rattled and shook our way back to the main road. But we figured out that driving at 60 km/h was actually smoother than going slower. The wheels plane or something on the washboard. Anyway, we had a lot fewer items flying around the camper, and it took a lot less time to get back to the main road.
We headed straight for the “heart of the island”. The back left corner where the Flinders Chase National Park is and the primary “highlights” are located. First stop (after the obligatory road pictures) was Admiral’s Arch, a natural rock bridge. There was a nice lighthouse on the bluff above. And the arch is pretty cool. But those aren’t really the main attractions. The area is literally covered in New Zealand fur seals. They were lounging all over the rocks pretty much everywhere we looked. Some were playing in the water, some were wrestling or walking around, but mostly they were just plopped wherever there was a sunny spot looking VERY relaxed.
We took a boatload of pictures of them and continued down to where the arch is. The arch is also pretty cool in that it looks like it has stalactites hanging from it. The water behind it was a deep blue and of course the rocks all around it were covered with very relaxed seals.
From there it was on to the Remarkable Rocks. An aptly named formation of granite that had risen up as lava at some point and cooled, then been weathered into interesting shapes. Their location overlooking the bay made them very dramatic. We went and climbed around on them for quite awhile. It was fun.
So far, we had not seen any of the wildlife that had been touted as a major reason for coming out, other than the roo mob at Stokes Bay. Actually, that’s not true. We just hadn’t seen any that was alive. Clearly there is a lot of wildlife running around, but they seem to spend a lot of time running into cars.
From Remarkable Rocks we headed back towards the Visitor’s Center but turned off to Platypus Lagoon. An 8km dirt road where we applied the “go fast” algorithm to good effect. When we got out there though, we did some mental calculations and realized we wouldn’t have time to take this hike and still see the other things we wanted to see. Primarily the koalas. So we turned back around and rattled back to the highway and on to the visitor’s center for some gift buying.
From there, on to the Koala Sanctuary. This is basically someone’s property that has a grove of eucalyptus trees. Wasn’t clear if the koalas were native or put there but it didn’t matter. In about every third tree, we found a koala. Some high up, some lower down. All looking very sleepy (they’re nocturnal, and the eucalyptus makes them a bit “high”). But we found one towards the end who was only maybe 6 feet up in the tree and very interested in climbing around, pulling at leaves and eating, and basically mugging for the camera. We burned a roll of film and probably 50 digital pictures on him. He made the trip to the Island worthwhile.
We now had about 2 hours to make the ferry and about 100 kilometers to go. So we started back towards the ferry port. On the way, Les saw an Echidnae crossing the road. Too fast for me to see him and gone by the time we turned around. But, in the process of looking for him we discovered a goanna gnawing on a dead kangaroo. Kind of gross but also pretty fascinating in a National Geographic sort of way. It really looked like he wanted to haul the thing home but he wasn’t getting anywhere. I think he was confused by the size of the roos head, which was quite small, and didn’t realize it was attached to a pretty substantial body. This was actually the second one of these we had seen (goannas). We saw another one on the way to the koala place too.
We were making good time so we decided to stop at Island Beach, which is about 20 km from the ferry town. It was a great beach. The water was completely flat. No surf. The beach sloped out very slowly into the ocean. It was easily a mile long. No wind. And maybe two people on it, way in the distance. I went in briefly since I could unzip the legs of my pants and we lamented that we couldn’t stay and swim here.
But, on the way to the ferry, we had a thought. What if we could get on the morning ferry? We could stay the night here and go swimming at the beach. It was going to be 7pm by the time the ferry docked anyway, so we were really only talking about 100 km or so of lost time. We decided we could afford it and since space was available on the morning ferry, we stayed.
It really was a great beach. The water was fairly warm. Not like Hangover Bay but pleasant. You could go out 100 yards and still touch bottom. There was no current or rip. We were out there half an hour or so. Very relaxing. Les swam way out to the swimming buoy. Probably 300 yards. You can barely see him in the picture, even on full zoom.
Then back to town. Supposedly there is a penguin colony that lives on the beach in town. We went down and tried to find them but the sign said they don’t come back until after dark. There’s a “tour” you can take but we chose not too. The lady at the caravan park said there weren’t very many this time of year. Plus it was $9 and it’s dark! Instead we went out for pizza (mmm, pizza) and a bit of e-mailing. The pizza place had an old PC and a dial up connection so we took the opportunity to send a few messages. Didn’t expect to find that out here.
So now we just have to make sure we wake up in time to make the 8am ferry. I’m setting my alarm since we’re both pretty tired.
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