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Published: March 7th 2007
Four full days in Australia and not a single sighting of a kangaroo. Gene and I grew rather disheartened. After quizzing several locals, we learned that kangaroos are nocturnal animals that feed from dusk until dawn, reenergizing in the forests during the light of day. I convinced Gene that, according to the books, one day on Kangaroo Island should do the trick. After all, why else would the island be named after the infamous Australian marsupial?
Just to be safe, I consulted with our waiter at dinner. “What do we have to do to see a kangaroo in this place?!? If we get up at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow morning and take a drive, are we pretty much guaranteed to see one?”
“Yes…just drive in
that direction,” pointing in a southwestly direction with his left forefinger.”
Like two overzealous tourists, we set the alarm for 5:30 a.m. that night and retired to bed early.
The following morning, I was reminded by the annoying rattle of the alarm clock just how much I haven’t missed that god-forsaken sound. Dazed, I pulled myself out of bed, determined to hunt down a kangaroo. As I caught a glimpse of myself in
the mirror on our way out the door, I felt confident that the ‘Roos’ would not see me coming under the guise of my raccoon eyes.
Unable to see three feet in front of the car without our brights on, Gene and I inched through the paved streets in the dark. “Should we turn here?” Gene asked as we approached the directional sign to Port Willoughby.
“I’m not sure. Didn’t the waiter suggest we head straight along the coast towards Kingscote?”
“Well, I figure our chances of seeing a kangaroo are probably greater inland. What do you think?”
“Sure, that’s fine.” We thereafter made our turn off the beaten path where we would be the only car on the road for the next two hours. Little did we know, after about ten kilometers, we would hit an ungraded dirt road. Previously advised that the kangaroos graze in the flatlands, Gene exited our car in what felt like the middle of nowhere, hoping to bask in the shadows of the kangaroos. A bit frightened by our dark and unfamiliar surroundings, I remained in the car with my eyes glued on Gene.
Motioning for me to quickly
get out of the car, Gene waved me over. I stood next to Gene as we watched four shadowy blobs moving about in the far distance. For all we knew, they could have been cattle. However, since that moment would constitute the climax of our expedition, we convinced ourselves that we had spotted kangaroos. Still, we continued on in hope of getting a photograph as proof that the elusive creatures do in fact exist.
At sunup, we gave up on our search to locate the nocturnal creatures and began retracing our steps down the dirt road toward our hotel. As we made our way, a flock of scavengers savored their breakfast along the roadside. Before I could tell Gene to slow down…
SPLAT… the damn bird flew right into the front fender. I did not need to utter a single syllable to make my frustrations or grief known.
He should have at least slowed down! Fully aware that even small talk would be enough to set me off, Gene and I drove the remainder of the way in silence.
Sitting down for breakfast, we encountered the same waiter from dinner the previous night. “So,” I began, “we got up
this morning before dawn and took a drive, but didn’t see
a single kangaroo.” I glared at the waiter questioningly, feeling cheated by his directions the night before.
“In which direction did you drive?”
I focused my eye contact back on Gene who confidently reported that we had taken the road toward Port Willoughby.
“Well, that would explain it. You went the wrong way. You should have taken the road along the coast toward Kingscote. After only a few kilometers, you would have come across what we call ‘kangaroo hill.’ The land there is flat, with water, and thousands of kangaroos gather there every night to feed until dawn. It’s virtually a kangaroo heaven.”
Again, I grew silent.
What a lovely start to our morning. First, we get up at the crack ass of dawn with the hope of seeing just one stinking kangaroo… to no avail. Then, Gene goes and kills a harmless bird. Now, we find out that we had taken the wrong damn road. I knew he told us to drive along the coast! As if we hadn’t already wasted the first 2 ½ hours of our morning driving in circles in
search of kangaroos, we had just one day to see all of Kangaroo Island. According to our
Lonely Planet Guide to Australia, Flinder’s Chase National Park was the best place to see Australian wildlife. Unfortunately, it was located on the direct opposite side of the island from our current whereabouts. However, determined now more than anything to win our game of hide-and-seek, we set out to trek the 110 kilometers to the other side of the island.
Along the way, we stopped at a historical surveyor’s lookout, requiring visitors to climb several hundred wooden stairs to reach its elevated vantage point. Assuming I would be discouraged by the strenuous climb, Gene flashed me the look of,
‘Well, what do you think?’ Feeling ambitious and determined to return home with buns of steel, I said, “Let’s do it!” All was well until I had ascended multiple flights of stairs, dressed in black, with the sun beating down on me. Gene peered down, “Are you okay?”
Panting, “Yeah, I’m fine!” I convinced myself that a few great photos would make the journey worthwhile.
Once at the top, Gene and I looked at each other in bewilderment, however, not because
of the spectacular view. Rather, we were confused as to why anyone would play such a cruel joke on tourists, luring them to the top of the hill to see essentially nothing but drab desert surroundings. Deciding that the view didn’t even warrant a photograph, I suggested that Gene take a photo of our car, which looked abandoned down below in the vacant parking lot. Gene joked, “Who’s that hoodlum lurking near our car?” In all actuality, any thief could have broken into our car, listened to an entire CD and ran the Chinese fire drill before I could have made it back down those stairs. To my relief, we were the only two assholes in sight.
Continuing toward our destination, Gene and I realized how desolate the greater part of Australia really is. As our empty tummies rumbled, we hoped to find a place to eat before setting off on our wildlife adventures at Flinder’s Chase National Park. Just outside of the park, Gene and I came across Kangaroo Island’s Wilderness Resort. Pulling into the driveway, Gene acknowledged, “Looks like a nice place. Too bad there were no vacancies when you inquired about booking.” Thinking back, Gene had
advised against our stay at the wilderness resort on the first night because it would have required us to drive a number of hours in the morning to catch the ferry to Kangaroo Island, take the 45-minute ferry ride over, and then drive over another hour to get to the resort on the other side of the island. Knowing that pointing out this minute detail would score me no points, I kept the thought to myself.
Gene asked, “Doesn’t this place have a restaurant?” I consulted the sign that indicated that there was an on-site restaurant at the resort, which unfortunately read, “For in-house guests only.” We ventured on in hopes that the park would service at least some kind of snack bar.
After a long day’s drive, we finally arrived at the national park. Gene eagerly purchased our tickets while I followed the smell of food into the souvenir shop. Tracking down Gene to tell him that the shop sold various types of sandwiches, I overheard him ask the woman at the ticket sales counter, “Where is the best place to see some kangaroos?”
Her response: “At this time of day, you may be hard-pressed to
find any, but you are likely to see some lovely birds and other small animals,” with a big satisfying grin on her face. Gene and I once again exchanged a disconcerted look.
“I can’t believe that we drove all the way out here for nothing,” I ranted. What do you want to do?” I inquired.
“I can’t believe that I just spent $30 on two tickets and we still aren’t going to see any goddamn kangaroos! Let’s just eat lunch and then figure out what we’re going to do.”
Chicken wraps sounded good to both of us until we took a bite into our sandwiches. Apparently, the Australians don’t believe in white meat. After trying to stomach a few bites without complaints, we both scraped all of the meat off of our sandwiches and finished our lettuce and carrot wraps as it started to pour rain outside. At this point, all we could do was laugh.
Wrapping up our lunches, we both hesitantly admitted that we had no interest in bird watching for the afternoon and decided to drive a bit further up the road to view what locals have labeled, The Remarkable Rocks. Along the
drive out of the park, Gene and I spotted two large marsupials hanging out in the road, sipping up puddles of rain water.
“Holy crap! I’m so excited, I’m going to pee my pants! Gene, where’s the camera? Where’s the camera? Don’t move! Oh my god! Oh my god!” I was so excited, I could hardly contain myself. Snapping off my seatbelt as fast as I could, I fumbled around for the camera, afraid that our fellow friends would hop off into the forest. I
needed a photo. As Gene slowly crept out of the car with the SLR camera, I practically hung out of the window snapping photos with my smaller digital. To our surprise, the kangaroos remained still in the road, keeping a careful watch on us, as they continued to lap up water. As Gene grew closer, I watched as the Roos’ muscles tensed up before they bounded down the road and back into the forest. What a marvelous sight!
Driving off down the road with smiles of success spanning our faces, we came across a mother kangaroo with her baby. We snapped more photos. As a bus driver headed in our direction apologized for
scaring off our kangaroos, he assured us that there were more down the road. I had finally found my kangaroo heaven.
After our photo shoot at The Remarkable Rocks, Gene and I decided to make a pit stop in the parking lot of Flinder’s Chase to take a power nap before heading back around the island toward our accommodations for the night. I quickly made myself comfortable in my reclined passenger seat while Gene struggled to recline his chair. Tired and burnt out from driving, he started to throw a hissy fit as he realized that his seat was broken. Pulling back on the plastic handle seat-side, Gene started frantically thrusting his back into his seat like a child throwing a tantrum seat-belted into his stroller. Except, little kids don’t have the foul mouth Gene does when he doesn’t have his way. Giggling at the absurdity of his actions, I offered him my seat, volunteering to nap in the back. Pouting, he adamantly refused my requests, grabbed an armful of dirty clothes from the back seat and arranged himself a stinky pillow against the driver’s side window. Setting our watch alarm for a half an hour, we were both
asleep within seconds.
Again awoken to the annoying
beep beep beep beep of the alarm, we set off back in the direction of our hotel. Along the way, we stopped at Seal Bay, but decided seeing a bunch of sea lions on a guided tour along the beach was not worth the $12.50 per person when we could visit the sea lions at Pier 39 in San Francisco for free.
We were relieved to finally reach Kingcote after having been cooped up in the car for the majority of our 12-hour day. Quickly recognizing that it was Saturday by the ‘CLOSED’ signs hanging from the windows of the shops in town, Gene and I hopelessly set out to find an internet café to look up the address of our hotel accommodations for the night. While the internet café in town was undoubtedly closed, we were lucky to find a Hot Spot for internet just outside of the café. Gene loaded up the computer on his lap and checked his Outlook Calendar for the address to our hotel. Realizing that he had not transferred the information from my email to his calendar, he handed the computer back over to
me to check my email for the confirmation.
We both pored over the computer screen as I pulled up the email confirmation. There is was: “Thank you for your reservation at Kangaroo Island Wilderness Resort for the night of 3 March 2007. We look forward to your stay.” For the umpteenth time that day, we exchanged looks of frustration and sat for moments in silence, mouths halfway open, unable to take our eyes off of the computer screen. We were both fully aware that this meant driving back to the other side of the island, just outside of Flinder’s Chase National Park.
“How the hell did we mistake where we were staying tonight?” I said aloud.
“I don’t know. I thought that was the place that was booked out for the evening,” Gene muttered in return. Under the impression that talking ourselves silly until we were blue in the face was going to change matters, we continued on.
“No, you didn’t want to stay there because it would have required so much driving.”
Imagine that. “Yes, but only for our first night’s stay after we had already spent all morning driving and on the ferry.”
“Oh. I suppose that decision was made before we changed our minds to spend an additional night on the island,” I thought out loud.
“But I thought you tried booking with them and were told that they had no vacancies,” Gene countered.
“Yeah, but that was a mistake, remember? I had tried booking for the night of the 2nd on accident when we needed a reservation for the 3rd.”
“That still makes no sense because we have to be back on this end of the island tomorrow morning to check in by 8:00 a.m. for our ferry,”
“Well, you agreed to the booking and I sent you the email confirmation. I don’t know why you would have booked us for the early morning ferry,” I retorted.
Realizing that pointing fingers was not going to change the location of our accommodations for the night, we once again set out for the opposite end of the island.
We couldn’t have been more eager to get out of the car when we arrived to the resort. Yet, once there, we were happy that we had made the decision to make the return drive. Gene
again commented on how nice the resort was as we headed to our room. “Gene, look! A wallaby! There’s another one! They are all over!” I was in all of my glory. When I had originally reviewed the resort’s website, it had stated that wallabies were known to frequent the porch steps of the guest rooms. However, I had not realized that the resort had created a natural habitat for the wallabies at the heart of the resort’s circle of rooms.
While I found the wallabies to be quite endearing as they favored miniature kangaroos, Gene described them as looking more like giant rats. Trying to hush him, I was afraid they would be offended.
After lugging our bags to the room, I ventured out to snap a few photos of my new pets. To my surprise, I observed a gentleman feeding a group of wallabies who were eating right out of his hand. “Gene, get the dried fruit! This is unbelievable!”
Knowing the danger of giving me the unopened bag of fruit, Gene warned me not to feed them the whole bag, making me take only a handful so that he could later help himself to
what was left. I planted my behind on somebody else’s porch and held out my hand, trying to bribe one of the little fellows over. Once one wallaby witnessed the rationing of food, I was quick to make friends. Gene hurriedly retreated to our room to grab the camera, joking that he wanted to catch the shot of my fingers getting gnawed off. I joked back, “No worries…I got my rabies shots!”
While the wallabies were very gentle in the taking of food from my hands, they could not help the sharpness of their claws as they clung to my arms and pants, trying to get at the berries. Just short of their climbing up onto my lap, I giggled as I was bombarded by wallabies awaiting their turn for a bite. I giggled, that is, until Oscar the Wallaby came hissing over and whacked one of the other wallabies with his upper paw right in the chest. It was time to stand up and show him who was boss as the last thing I wanted was Wallaby-zilla whacking me.
After a gnaw on my ring, a scratch of my boob and a hump of my leg, I
decided feeding time was over…at least for a little while. Gene later discouraged me from feeding the wallabies on our deck as he was trying to enjoy a glass of wine after a long day’s drive. I just couldn’t help myself as one stood on the lawn batting its long eyelashes at me and waiting ever so patiently for a drop of food. The problem was, the minute they heard the crinkle of the bag, I had a mob of hopping wallabies headed for our porch…and one very pissed off husband.
Things were going well until the bully came back hissing as though he was having an asthma attack, swatting at all of the other wallabies with his short upper arms. I quickly jumped onto my chair. “That’s it!” Gene grabbed the bag of berries from the table and threw them into the room. Watching as he scared off all of the wallabies, I slumped down into my chair and pouted. “You’re no fun.”
The following morning, at 6 o’ clock sharp, we again woke up to the maddening sounds of the alarm clock. We drove back to the other side of the island at a snail’s pace,
trying to avoid contact with the hundreds of kangaroos and wallabies springing to and from the road.
Where were all of these f*ckers yesterday morning?
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Barb
non-member comment
Remember the ducks?
Gina, that picture of you with all of the wallabies surrounding your legs reminds me of the one I have of you when we were in Tampa and all of the baby ducks followed us home. Looks like you were in your glory.