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Published: February 10th 2018
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After a wonderful night’s sleep we had a huge full breakfast - included in our tour, and might I say what a wonderful tour this has been? Sealink tours, brilliant.
At the very civilised hour of 10.15, the man who delivered us here last night picked the six of us up and took us to our first stop, Clifford’s Honey Farm, where the rest of our mob, and 6 extra day trippers from Adelaide, joined us. Dave Clifford is older than us, was a farmer but found he loves bees and when the wool prices dropped he concentrated on making the bees a business. There are over 30 bee keepers on the island, and Dave has over 300 hives which he moves around to different areas of the island. Over here they have native bees but he farms Ligurian bees - they’re Italian apparently but we didn’t notice an accent. Dave had assembled his tools of trade in his work shed, which he demonstrated the use of, including his separation processing plant. Quite a big plant. He also told us that he extracts 3 products from the hives - the honey of course for honey, mead and cooking, the wax
used for polish, candles and lip balms, and propolis used for medicinal purposes. We also enjoyed some of their honey ice cream.
After this Mick took us down to the bay where we saw a rock lobster trawler refuelling In the prettiest bay!
Then we were off to lunch at Hanson Bay on a property. These people kept having strangers drive in off the road to look at the koalas in their trees, so they set up a cafe and turned it into a business. After lunch, prepared by a french chef, we wandered around the trees looking at their koalas, then we were off again to Flinders Chase National Park at the western end of the island. Here we saw rugged scenery, seals basking on rocks and swimming in rock pools, amazing geological formations and a lighthouse with the 3 keepers cottages turned into rental accommodation.
On the way we saw plantations of Tasmanian Blue Gums, and Mick explained that many years ago a company bought 33000 hectares of farming land and planted it out with the gums for wood chip. The loss of animal stock on the island meant that the abattoirs closed down and
hundreds of people lost their jobs. With the loss of jobs, many left the island, shops started closing and even sporting clubs had problems filling teams. Then the company went broke But they’ve finally found a compiany to buy and take all the trees. In the meantime, Kangaroo Island concentrated on tourism, and now that is the main industry.
After the Remarkable Rocks and the Admirals Arch we commenced the long trek back to Penneshaw to catch the 7.30 ferry back to the mainland. We had time to stop and grab a bit to eat - Tom and I got a delicious pizza.
Kangaroo Island is so big that Mick, our bus driver tour guide has a holiday property down near Flinders Chase. We surprised by the
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