Kangarain Island

As I mentioned in my previous post a few days ago I booked a spontaneous trip to Kangaroo Island. Adelaide really is not the most exciting city so I figured I should spend some of my time here experiencing something special. You all know my luck, so of course on Wednesday I was still sweating around 11pm and Thursday I had to commence my trip under grey skies.

The groovy grape tour bus took its time so I had the opportunity to get to know another participator: Mar from Spain. She has lovely curls and a nice smile up until the moment I told her and her short shorts about the weather forecast. The bus came twenty minutes later and only one other woman was in there to greet us (beside the two drivers). Her name was Jocelyn, she was from France and spoke very broken English. Steve (second driver) and Clancy (tour guide) didn’t bother about the rest of the payment yet, instead they just had us enter in a friendly and fun way and stopped again a few meters further in front of the YHA to let more passengers aboard. In this way we stopped along a few hostels and a hotel until all 13 tour participators filled the bus. A French boy (Fabien) and his mum, another French (Jean), his sister (Jessica) and his brother in law (Mika), a Slovenian guy, a Canadian couple (Dennis and Janice), two other Germans, Jocelyn, Mar and myself.

During the 90 minute drive in Southern direction we had one toilet, coffee and breakfast stop which I was incredibly thankful for, because I hadn’t had a chance to eat - at this point I should probably mention that I started waiting for the bus at 6 am. On this occasion we could all get to know each other. I also just remembered, that the two other Germans only joined us on the ferry, so at this point we were only 11 and everyone was amazed by the fact, that I was the only German around. 

Our tour guide Clancy was a funny character! I feel like they all have to be, but I was pretty happy having him as our guide. Despite the bad weather her managed to loosen everyone up with a few jokes. Before I forget: I had a look through his two traveling albums and was astonished by first the sights and secondly the quality of his photographs! Lots of macro shots of spiders and plants, but also most gorgeous skies and sunsets and the whole range of it! We had a good laugh when about half the photographs showed him handling a lizard! He even turned around once to have a closer look at a dead snake on the road.

“All right, Gang, this is a tiger snake! On the mainland they are stripy, on Kangaroo Island they are black.” Gang is what he called us. Steve drove the bus back to Adelaide when we reached the ferry, so on our trip we were only with Clancy. Not much to tell about our 45 minute ferry crossing, beside it being very rough. I slept but I know Mar got very sick!

Kangaroo Island is much bigger than you would expect! It is 150 km in length, 35 km across on its widest spot and 1 km on its smallest spot. The bushes look just like those on the mainland, no tree or plant higher than two meters maybe, because of an all destructive fire four years ago. The remarkable thing really is how untouched the area is. We spotted lots of wild Koalas and other wildlife as well of course!

At one thirty we took a guided tour down in seal bay, where the cutest fur seals live. They are wild seals who live in a protected area, where they can go about their business undisturbed. Visitors are only allowed to the beach with a guide and we didn’t step closer to the animals than ten meters. As it was cold and the seals wanted to be away from the water they lay very high up and we didn’t have a lot of room to move around. At one point a female returned from her fishing trip out in the sea and roared (or whatever you call it) for her baby. It had just been breeding season and in this season the pups the females had been carrying around for 17 months are born as well as them mating again with the males. Therefore, the most time a female seal is not pregnant, are six days! Sounds pretty rough. Anyway, as this mum was calling all little seals on the beach hurried towards her, because they cannot identify their mum’s shout. The mum knows which one is hers though and will only let that one suckle. Sure enough in front of us a little pup shot out of the dunes and slid down onto the beach. Man, they can be fast! This one was reunited with its mum. Absolutely adorable! When walking back along a secured bridgy path we saw one pup from last season (so already older than the one we saw before) hurried through the dunes to find sheltered in a hollowed bush. 

this one is the little pup hurrying towards its mum.

The people who work there don’t interfere with the seals life. They barely enter their habitat in the dunes and only help wounded animals when those wounds were human inflicted. Later Elana (our guide) showed us pictures of one male who returned from sea with a horrible shark bite. All his back was open and they expected him to die. This was in January 2003. November of the same year all that was left was a big scar on his back and he went out to hunt again. To me that is absolutely remarkable. By the way, these seals were almost extinct but now there are 14 thousand over all (I think) and a colony of one thousand in seal bay.

Earlier in the day we visited a bay filled with pelicans. They are beautiful birds as I think and it was really funny to see the pelicans snap their long beaks at annoying sea gulls. We also saw another beautiful beach which must have been a lot nicer in better weather. This was a sad thing about the trip: Kangaroo Island is right out in the sea and always colder than the main land. Nothing lies between there and Antarctica so those horrendously cold winds hit the island without stopping. Especially the Western end of it, where we spent most of the first day, was so cold, that enjoying the sites was nearly impossible. All we really wanted was to step back inside into the bus. Since I lost my scarf somewhere in Perth I really need to purchase a new one! Even here in Adelaide I get very cold when the wind blows around my neck and Melbourne and especially Tasmania are worse weatherwise! Apparently you can experience all four season in one day in Melbourne.

Because of the temperature we all enjoyed a visit at the Emu Eucalyptus farm. They produce their own eucalyptus products like soap, laundry detergent, oil, and wound creme. They also use emu fat for some products which is extracted without hurting the only two emus on the island (they don’t occur in KI’s wildlife). The hand lotion we were allowed to try was really soft and smelled beautiful! A lot of the others bought products, I didn’t. At this point I may say that I was the only work and traveler under all of us. They were all there on holidays and interestingly most of them only went on tours. Say starting with a Uluru tour, then a Barosse Valley tour, a KI tour, a Great Ocean Rd tour and so on. The tour was fun, but I couldn’t imagine spending a whole holiday on tours.

We also had lunch at this farm which Clancy prepared outside. I was surprised at the many different meats, cheeses and veggies to put on a sandwich. I definitely hadn’t expected it to be such a nice lunch. The guy I booked the tour through hadn’t told Clancy that I am vegetarian though. It wasn’t really a problem because there was enough food for me to eat, but Clancy was upset with them because it would have been a problem had I been gluten free or lactose intolerant.

I don’t quite remember the order of the things we did. After the fur seals we went all the way to the west end I think to see Admiral’s Arch and the sea lion colony. Sea lions are the dark ones with a long snout. Although they look more slick they have 5 times more hair than the seals and therefore don’t mind the cold water at all. They way down to Admiral’s Arch was so windy that I though I was going to be blown off the track. The sea beneath us was wild and white. Luckily at Admiral’s Arch itself one turns a corner and is rather sheltered from the wind so we could watch the seals down there undisturbed. Two were fighting a few others surfing the waves. No one wanted to leave simply for the fact of knowing how cold the way back to the bus would be. Our bus was called Hooksy by the way. She was a manual but a little old so the many hills on the island really challenged her all the time. “Come on, Hooksy!”, Clancy cheered her on many times as we were slowly creeping upward.

Hooksy and Admiral's Arch

Remarkable Rocks was next on the list. The way they came to be (I think) was because hot lava pushed up inside the earth until it didn’t go higher anymore. There it became solid over time. Kangaroo Island used to be much higher but has been washed away by the rough conditions. This way the lava rock, granite, what ever was revealed at the surface. The rocks got their crazy shapes through erosion. They are huge and again we found shelter from the wind in a hollow rock. This is all for the first day I think. We slept in eight beed dorms on a farm, which I shared with the three French and Jocelyn as well as Mar. For tea (dinner) we had tacos with a huge variety of fillings again. Clancy even made a separate bean tomato sauce thing for me so I could have something warm to eat and the Canadians shared their huge bottle of nice wine with us.

The second day was supposed to be a degree colder but rainless, yet we were greeted by rain in the morning. For our two activities, kayaking and sand boarding, we required nicer weather so we went to another farm where a man had planted a lot of certain gum trees, which Koalas like. There we went for a long walk to spot these marsupials. I saw five myself, none of them in action so I then went out onto the grass to get nice close ups of kangaroos, which only fled when I was about two meters close to them. On the way Mar and I also found an animal carcass. There are no meat eaters around there so the rest of the body must have just rotten away from a dead animal. Jean got a really good video of a male Koala climbing up a tree and grunting. They really make the most ugly noises! Anyone wanting to see the video just check out my facebook page where I shared Jean’s video.

This is lovely Mar!

Next up, I think, was a honey farm with honey made from Italian bees (and purely these). It was very interesting to taste the different honeys which come from different trees depending on which one is blooming at the time! These bees are pure bred and cannot be found anywhere else anymore, not even Italy!

We also saw a newspaper article about the serial cat killer. He killed and skinned cats saying they were ferrel. For this he was put in jail but now you can meet him if you want and his contact details were pinned next to the article as were some of his cat furs. The French laughed about it all of the previous night but really it’s a little disturbing!

My stroll through the grass had gotten my shoes completely wet so Janice was so nice to lend me her sandals. These I took off again at the next stop because we were going kayaking and I really didn’t need to get another pair wet. Mar and I had lots of fun going along the river, although we were the slowest ones. To not absolutely fall behind we turned around before reaching the bridge and this was a good decision! On the way back we were going against the wind and at one point our canoe even decided to turn around so we were going backwards for a few minutes. We almost lost a lot of progress because we were laughing so hard. Despite being exhausting we had lots of fun on that canoe and I expected to be really sore the next day, which I luckily wasn’t. However I got really really wet. My Jeans, the only pair of pants I brought, were soaked bottom to top. My outfit after this was absolutely stunning as I wore my pajama pants and Janice’s stunning sandals. With socks inside! Again we had lunch before heading to our last destination for the second day. Little Sahara!

Between all the bushland we made our way to huge sand dunes, boards on our backs. It was windy and the sand was still wet and sticky but we decided to still give sand boarding a try. I don’t have any photographs of this but hopefully Dennis will send me his soon because he had a really good camera with him. A lot of us fell on the way down and my board didn’t go very far. The Slovenian guy broke the first record by not falling, then the German guy managed to slide the farthest, which was soon topped by the French couple. At this point the sun peaked out between the clouds and finished our trip with some nice weather. There we also took our group picture.

I didn’t make friends for life but definitely met some cool people that made the trip more enjoyable. Clancy was so nice to drop me off at Seaford road on the way back where I was picked up by Robin, so I didn’t have to go into the city and all the way back. The drive on the mainland was beautiful. The sky was still dark and grey but the sun shone golden onto the hills and for the first time I saw a rainbow touch the floor! It was rather upsetting not to be able to get out and take photographs with a good camera! Clancy gave me a big hug to say good bye and then the trip was over and I got very excited about chilli prawns and a beautiful salad when I got home.

This post is already long but since I didn’t do much the last two days I might as well just squeeze them in :D

On Saturday I went into the city for some free wifi to then meet up with Robin and his daughter Olivia for a coffee. I had to get to Goodwood hotel on Goodwood Rd and tried to find a bus that goes there. First I needed a scone for lunch but couldn’t find Baker’s Delight. An Indian guy approached me and asked what I was looking for and then took me to Baker’s Delight.

“But why do you want to eat a scone? You should eat healthy, come with me I will take you for lunch.”

“No thanks, I don’t have much time and I really just want something small.”

“Ah okay, where do you have to go? I have a car and I can take you.”

I ignored his offer, got my scone and asked the girl who was serving me, if she knew how I could get to Goodwood. Sadly she was no help at all and the guy pointed towards the car park repeating he could take me.

“You can wait a half hour for the bus or I can take you.”

“That’s alright.”, I said and kept walking. Unfortunately he kept coming with. None of the bus stops said anything about Goodwood Rd and he made it impossible for me to have a conversation with anyone else. When I said I will just ask someone he said rather upset: “Okay, ask if you don’t trust and believe. No, don’t ask! I will show you on the map.” Luckily I saw on the map that the big road we were on met West Terrace, another big road which led to Goodwood Rd and could refuse when he said “Let’s go a long here, is a short cut and my car is right there.” What on earth? He said is car was back where we started. I became more and more uncomfortable until I decided to call Robin who then offered to pick me up. I saw his car coming towards us on the other side of the road and mentioned to the guy that “My boyfriend is coming to pick me up now.” Within a second he was gone. What a creep!

So much for this. Hot chocolate with Olivia was fun and we then went to Dina’s house, Robin’s sister, for dinner. After that I was supposed to go out into the city with her step son Daniel. I learned about this per text message when I was on Kangaroo Island. Dressed all nicely we took the bus had a good chat on the way there where we met his long time friend Andrew. We went to a bar first, then a club and then another club and although drinks here are very expensive I didn’t have to pay one drop, which I felt very guilty about but they wouldn’t take money from me. The night was fun, we laughed lots, danced and talked a lot of rubbish. I even had an angry conversation with a plastic Santa Clause because he mixed up months, as it isn’t even December yet.

Sunday then was no fun at all. It made me remember why I usually don’t drink at all or don’t drink a lot and I think I will stick with that again in the future. Dina and Daniel were absolutely lovely and took good care of me and so it happened that I spent the whole day there only to be treated with delicious pizza for tea after not having eaten all day. Lovely! Daniel also took me for a tour of their garden that they are fixing up. Lots and lots of things they are growing there and the garden itself is rather hilly but beautiful! I don’t really know how to explain it. Dina and Steve will be moving to Queensland because of his job so I will be likely to visit them again when I get to the area. 

So much for my weekend. Today I will go to the botanical garden and the South Australian museum where they have a special photography exhibit. The name I forgot but it features Australia.

I love and miss you all!
Flipper