Kangaroo Island is a bit of very rural Australia, with one rather smallish towns and a couple of really small villages.  The B&B where we stayed, Roo Lagoon Cottages, is on a farm in the middle of the island, surrounded by paddocks (pastures), groves of eucalyptus, and tall brush.  The whole island resembles somewhat Sonoma County in California, with dry (we were there in early fall) grass and eucalyptus savannahs.  At night it is almost impossible to drive anywhere without killing something; we managed not to hit a kangaroo (their corpses litter the roads) but did hit one opossum.  They run straight ahead of the car, swerving back and forth erratically.  After the first one I realized the only way to avoid them is to come to a total stop:  Only then do they dart off the road and up the nearest tree.

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I adapted to driving on the left quicker than I expected to, but I’m glad my first experience was on very rural roads.  The first day I took a long hike in one of the national parks; LaJean sat home nursing several blisters on her feet from all the walking in Sydney.  At Flinders Chase National Park I saw a formation called “Remarkable Rocks,” which really is remarkable; huge limestone boulders on top of a half-globe boulder that rises up from the surf; the limestone boulders are all eroded into weird and interesting shapes.  I took at least a dozen pictures.

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Then I went over to a place called Admiral’s Arch, a limestone tunnel under a headland.  The whole area is a wildlife sanctuary because it is a breeding ground for New Zealand Fur Seals, which are abundant on every side.  I got a really neat picture of a nursing seal pup.
 
 

 The second day, we went with Jim Thistleton, Kangaroo Island Diving Safaris, on his really very comfortable catamaran.  Jim is on a first-name basis with every leafy sea dragon (a species of sea-horse) in the straits; within 5 minutes he had one corralled for us.  We saw two more on the second dive.  For pictures, check out: http://www.divegallery.com/Leafy_Sea_Dragon.htm.  Also saw two purple groupers, each about 3-4 feet long, dozens of other types of fish, sponges, soft corals, etc.  There were several really nice people on the boat, including two professional underwater photographers; we bought a calendar with ten pictures taken by one of them, Mayer Krieg.  It was great to have the opportunity to do my first dives after being certified with Jim; he’s very professional and I had a high level of confidence in him.  My first dive I was pretty incompetent about buoyancy and breath control and went through an air tank in about 20 minutes.  Unfortunately I missed the chance to swim with seals; the seals didn’t get into the water until I was back in the boat.  The second dive I did better and lasted about 30 minutes – still far short of the more typical 45 minutes.

 That evening we drove into Kingscote, the island’s main town (about the size of Jerome, Idaho) for dinner, and to take one of the guided penguin tours.  The penguins, about fourteen inches tall, come in from fishing after dark to nest in burrows along the shore; because they are endangered, you are allowed to go down on the b each only with a trained guide.  We were a couple of weeks early so most of the penguins are still out to sea; we saw only a half dozen, some in burrows peering out at us and some standing on the rocks above the  beach.  We have no pictures of them because the flash would bother them.

 The couple who run Roo Lagoon B&B where we stayed, Jon and Cath Gloyne, were also very nice (almost everyone we’ve met in Australia has been friendly & fun to talk with).  He’s a woodworker, makes bowls etc.  They converted half of an old shed into the guest cottage; it’s pleasant but small & sort of funky.  The bathroom opens off the porch and there’s no door on the bathroom so if you want privacy you have to close the door between kitchen and porch.  Roosters woke us up every morning about 4 a.m.  There are also several varieties of lovely songbirds, including the Australian Magpie, black and white like ours but with a lovely flute-like call.  Cath cooked three of the dinners we had on the island; she’s an excellent cook, and the island really does have excellent produce.  She fixed kangaroo for us once; it tastes rather like elk, and has a similar consistency.  We really liked it.  Odd as it sounds, they are not allowed to raise kangaroo for meat or hides on the island; farmers can get a permit to cull them, but have to leave the corpse to rot, unused.  All the kangaroo meat they eat is brought in from elsewhere in Australia.

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The third day I was tempted to go diving again but instead went, with LaJean, to visit a couple of wildlife parks.  The first had black swans in the lake (I didn’t even know there was such a bird) and a wombat, who decided to put on a show for us.  They tend to hide out in their burrows during the day so I think we were pretty lucky.  There were other animals, including lots of kangaroos, in large pens; they sold food pellets to feed the kangaroos.  We bought a package, used about half of it, then decided to move on - LaJean put the remainder in her purse and forgot about them.

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We then drove up the road to a farm called Paul’s Place, a working farm with herds of sheep and cattle as well as a motley collection of indigenous wildlife, which Paul shows off for three hours every afternoon.  He is a real showman, and everyone on the tour had a good time; I am happy to report that he also seems to take very good care of the animals, and is quite protective of them.  I think one reason for the limited hours is to allow them the full amount of rest they need.  We saw shiny black cockatoos and an echidna (spiny anteater) as well as a kangaroo with her joey in her pouch (it is odd, more like peering into the kangaroo’s womb than I would have expected; the joey is totally hairless and blind, looks very much like a very underdeveloped fetus, which in fact it is.

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We also got to hold a koala and feed it eucalyptus leaves.
 
 
 

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At the first place, LaJean had bought some kangaroo food pellets to feed the kangaroos and didn’t use them all up.  She still had some in her purse, and the kangaroos at Paul’s smelled them, so she was pretty popular.  They all but burglarized her purse.
 

That evening we drove down to a cove called Rock Pool to have yabbies (a kind of crawfish) at the Rock Pool Café.  It's interesting how much variation there can be in vocabulary; for example, Kangaroo Islanders refer to a pond as a lagoon and a cove as a pool.  While waiting for our meal to be ready, I took a walk through a long quasi-tunnel in the cliff to a huge, wide beach, lovely white sand, and not a soul in sight.  Had we had more time I'd have loved to have gone back and just spent a lazy afternoon on that beach.

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The Rock Pool Café is a marvelous little establishment, a shack with picnic tables inside and in front and a chef who prepared the most marvelous meal, yabbies for a first course, followed by delicately breaded whiting, vegetables, a delicious salad, and dessert. All of that on a picnic table overlooking the cove with several fishing vessels, paddocks filled with grazing kangaroos on all sides, and a glorious sunset.  It was a truly magical time.
 

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The fourth day we finally found koalas in the wild; a lane lined with the kind of eucalyptus trees they prefer, and a koala sleeping in every other tree.  One of them favored us by half waking up to move to a more comfortable branch - like rolling over in bed, but I got a good shot of his face.  Most of my photos are just big lumps of fur.  The koalas apparently have become something of a problem; they have stripped several of the trees totally bare and killed them.  K. Island has the usual problems of a wildlife preserve, trying to find a satisfactory balance between protection and normal predators, etc., all in the face of opposition from well meaning but biologically naïve people who don’t want any of them killed for any reason.

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We also visited Kelly Cave, a dry limestone cave that is quite spectacular.  I took several photos of the various stalactites, including some in the form of sheets.
 

After Kelly Cave, we visited Seal Beach, a preserve for the Australian Sea Lion, which is, like the Penguin beach, off limits except with a guide.  I got several pictures of seal pups nursing, and one of two young males fighting.  Unfortunately, I ran out of storage space and LaJean ran out of film before one of the pups got rambunctious, so we didn’t get a picture of the seal pup chasing two separate flocks of birds, then going up to sniff at some tourists’ pant legs.

Kangaroo Island is a dreamy, almost magical sort of place, protected by its remoteness from Sydney and Melbourne, and by the restricted access (ferry or puddle-jumper airplane).
 

NEXT:  Stage 3, Blue Mountains and O'Reilly's Rain Forest Retreat

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Last updated September 15, 2002
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