South Australia: Suicidal kangaroos and Pom bashing emus

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A quick flight later and we were in Adelaide. Time to recharge the batteries before another early start to catch a bus from the city centre down to Cape Jervis to catch the Sealink ferry to Kangaroo Island.

We'd booked a car at Penneshaw to drive round the island as there are no local public transport services. Now to look at the island on a map it appears very small in comparison to Australia, however is about 120Km long. Only the main roads are sealed, the rest being dirt tracks cut through the bush which makes pretty hairy driving, especially when the roads become ridged like corrogated iron and driving at any less than 50Km/hour feels like you're in a car suspension test centre.

Our first stop of the day was to the information centre to get the low down on the sights to visit, nearly all of which were on the Southern side of the island. We then visited Kingscote, the island's capital and our resting place for the night before heading to the sights. On our drive we encountered our first wildlife of the island, a large echidna, which looks like a cross between a hedgehog and a porcupine, waddline across the road before burying it's head under a log as Laura approached (but then who wouldn't). We stopped at "Paul's Place", which was a farm where they had a number of rescued wildlife as well, including wallabies, emus, kangaroos and an alpacha to name some. Laura got to hold a possum and a koala, while I was lumbered with a long carpet snake and also got the dubious pleasure of feeding the emus from the top of my head, once Paul had found out that I was a pom (he had me stand with my back to the fence while throwing seeds on my head which the emus pecked them off...joy!) The place was more geared towards families and was a bit of a circus so we left early to catch the pelican feeding at Kingscote.

This happens daily at 5pm and no-one knows that more than the pelicans themselves. We arrived at about 4.45pm and there was already a large gathering of the awkward looking birds on the nearby shore. We sat down on some rocks to admire one of them who was sunning himslef sitting on the quay and within 5 minutes the whole flock of them had swum over to sit with us with a hopeful look in their eyes. Following the pelicans came the tourists and within 5 minutes of the birds arriving a whole flock of similarly hungry eyed tourists had crowded round us. All because we sat down to admire one pelican, mob mentality is a wondorous thing. At 5pm a friendly chap came out with a bucket of fish and made his way through the pelicans to stand and tell us about the birds whilst throwing them fish. Despite their somewhat ugly and ungainly apperance they are friendly birds and well behaved, only one of them tried to sneak a fish out of the bucket early, the rest all waited patiently for their turn. Following the feeding they all took off and as a group circled higher and higher on the thermals until they were just dots on the horizon.

Our next wildlife spotting epsiode also took place on Kingscote quay but this time after dark. At about 9:30pm we gathered to admire the Fairy Penguins who come ashore after dark to nest in their burrows. After meeting with our guide a small group of us trooped down to a specially built boardwalk and with the help of a red light (white light dazzles them) we got to see several families of penguins all milling around by the shore. They have no natural predators here so instead of coming back to shore in one big group they swim up in dribs and drabs, shake of the feathers and waddle up the beach. The reason they are called Fairy Penguins has nothing to do with their ability to grant wishes, but because they are only about 30cm tall! It was so tempting to swipe one and put it in my rucksack to join my previously swiped baby joey (if only) but sadly that was not allowed.

The next day dawned bright and sunny and we headed off to the western end of the island towards Flinders Chase National Park. Enroute we stopped at Seal Bay, where, funnily enough, we got to walk amongst a large colony of sealions. The sealions have lived here for years and like a lot of other wildlife on Kangaroo island are very tolerent of humans. Mostly they just lie like sacks of potatos sunning themselves but every now and then they will drag themselves to the sea edge and disappear off. Next stop was Koala Walk (you can see where this is going) and sure enough sitting wedged in the gum trees were several furry grey individuals fast asleep. Flitting in amongst the koalas were noisy but beautifully coloured lorikeets, even their ear splitting screeching did not seem to disturb the grey one's slumber.

Finally we arrived at the National Park having narrowly missed running over a kangaroo that decided to hop across the road in front of the only vehicle for miles. Some fancy swerving later and we arrived in the park our eyes scanning continually for more suicidally inclined hoppy individuals. The park is a lovely place with wallabies wandering around quite happily. We headed for the Remarkable Rocks, granite formations that were quite remarkable and Admirals Arch where there is another huge seal colony. Our final stop as at the Platypus Watering hole where sadly all we saw was some long necked turtles, no platypus to add to our burgeoning wildlife collection. On our way out of the park we had our second kangaroo in the road experience. This one was a fully grown chap who was just sitting in the middle of the road. I duly slowed expecting him to bounce away but he just sat there watching me come to a full stop. Unsure what to do next, Alex got out in order to 'scare' it away, except that it just bounced towards him. He hastily beat a retreat to the car (no-one wants to get into a boxing match with a kangaroo) and shut the door so the kangaroo was left peering in the passenger window.

That evening we caught the ferry back to Adelaide and the following day collected another hire car in order to drive to Melbourne via the Great Ocean Road. We headed out past Murray Bridge and down through the Cooronga National Park along the coast where more pelicans were observed, into Kingston where a visit was paid to Larry the Giant Lobster, and onto our first overnight stop of Robe. This is a very pretty seaside town where you could easily spend a few days but sadly we only had one night before we were on the road again. Our hotel here was the Caledonian Inn which was right on the beach and did great food. The second day found us stopping at Mount Gambier to view their Blue Lake (which really is blue, personally I think they put food colouring in it) and their sunken gardens. Next stop was at Cape Bridgewater on the Limestone Coast where we observed blow holes and a petrified forest (really just a load of limestone that has formed and looks a bit like tree trunks) and finally onto the Shipwreck Coast. As you can imagine this is a stretch of coast where many ships got wrecked (about 200) due to the treacherous undercurrent and vicious rocks. It is also famous for it's unusual limestone formations such as 'The Grotto', 'Bay of Islands' and most famously 'The 12 Apostles' actually now 11 as one fell in the sea a few years back. Having checked into our accomodation which was suffering a power blackout along with the rest of Melboune and the surrounding area due to a bush fire burning around the power station, we headed out to watch sunset over the 12 Apostles. This was one of our more spectacular sunsets to date and was made even better by the arrival of some Fairy Penguins just after dusk. Unlike the Kingscote penguins these guys were quite nervous. Firstly they waited for all their penguin friends to arrive before tackling the beach (does someone take a roll call? Dave? Check. Bob? Check. Doris? Check.) Once assembled it still took several attempts for them to make it up the beach. They would begin to waddle up the beach and then someone would panic and they would all hurtle back into the sea. On about their third attempt they managed to do it and moved as one small huddled mass up the beach to their burrows where they dispersed as rapidly as they had gathered.

Next day saw a return of the power and our final push to Melbourne. We paid a brief visit to Cape Ottoway (more suicidal kangaroos lurking at the edge of the road) and stopped for lunch at Erskine Falls. This is meant to be a seriously gushing waterfall but due to the terrible drought that has gripped Australia, it was more like someone taking a leak off the top, very disappointing. Todays driving saw us hugging the ocean all the way up to Torquay, our final stop on the Great Ocean Road, with many hairpin bends, steep inclines and even some koalas swaying in the trees above the road. Various yellow signs told us to look out for kangaroos, wombats (sadly never seen) koalas, echinadas and cattle. At Torquay we stopped to check out Bells Beach, deserted as it happens, with no sign of the Great White Shark that has been plaguing it recently, and the Surf World Museum which was really interesting. An hour or so later we were driving into Melbourne and heading for our backpackers, or at least trying to. Although the roads are laid out in a grid system Melbourne is plagued with hook turns (to avoid the trams) no left turns and one way streets. It took sometime to finally pull up outside our backpackers as we kept getting shunted down roads we didn't want to go down.

Our sightseeing trip of Melbourne was brief. The first day was hot and sunny and saw us strolling through the Botanical Gardens on the lookout for Kookabarras (none seen) and heading up the Rialto Tower for a panaramic view of the city (and a sneaky look through binoculars at the Australian Open). In the evening we met up with Lukey, Alex's old flatmate who took us for dinner in St Kilda's the funky beachside suburb of Melbourne.
The following day Laura participated in the ultimate Melbourne tour, a Neighbours Tour! Despite pouring rain (bloody Melbourne) Ramsay Street was visited, which is suprisingly small in real life, and Libby (aka Kym Valentine) was met. All very exciting. That afternoon Lukey kindly collected us and took us to the airport we where we caught our first international flight in a month, heading over to Wellington in New Zealand.

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Comments

[Gemma & Rich]

campervan!!!
Hey guys ur blog looks really good!!! we are currently gettin pissed upon on Magnetic Island and there are loads of mozzies!!! we were just wondering where you got ur campervan for NZ?? Think u mentioned it in ur email... we are trying to find one, but they are all well expensive. How long u in NZ for? we are hoping to head over a little earlier than planned, changing flights to next week....catch up soon x