Kangaroo Island Day -1

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After the night out with my friends from Geneva, the end of day light savings time here in Australia could not come at a more convenient time! The extra hour of sleep can make quite the difference when you have to get up at 5:30 am!! Needless to say, it was an early start nevertheless, and after a 2 hour drive to the ferry and then another hour on the boat, I arrived on Kangaroo Island at around 10:15 am. This time i was travelling with Adventure tours again, since they were such a good operator at Uluru already. Our group was very small, just six of us, plus our driver and guide Simon, and so we basically got to know eachother super quick, and what a good thing i had to practice my French the day before, because three of my fellow travellers were from France, plus a couple from Zurich. So after we got the meet and greet over with, we headed out of Peneshaw (the small town where the ferry lands) and drove right towards the southern part of the island. Kangaroo Island is actually one third the size of the Netherlands, and so you can imagine, that there is lot's of open space, some farm land, national parks, loads of wildlife and ocassionally you actually get to see another person!
Our first destination was a Eucalypt Destillery, where we sampled some of the oils and creams that are made out of the eucalyptus trees. Lunch was in one of the many picnic shelters around the island, and then it was on to the Australian Sea Lion Colony where we had a chance to see the rare Australian Sea-Lions play in the waves, suckle milk from mom, sleep on the beach, and all that within a few feet. Pure joy to watch these amazing animals in their natural habitat. We also saw our first Echidna roaming the brush and sand dunes. Quite cool to experience all this wildlife that is native to Australia. And this should only be the beginning !!

After about 45 minutes on the beach, we had to make sure that we have enough light in the day to see Koalas and so on the bus again it was and off to an area where we were hoping to find the cute and cuddly animals in the trees. . This was the absolut highlight of the trip for me!!! Seeing the Koalas in the trees, snoozing away, maybe blinking down at us crazy people with cameras was an amazing experience! We were like kids in a candy store! Around us were bouncing Kangaroos and Wallabies who started to slowly wake up in the cooler evening hours, in the trees were the Koalas, and the birds were chirping in with their song!! Nature and wildlife like i had dreamed to experience! AWESOME!

Since it got dark farely quickly, and we still had to head to our evening farm stay accomodation, we headed out towards the National Park (where we will be all day tomorrow) and the Flinders Chase Farm. Since a good BBQ is an Ozzie tradition, we too had another BBQ tonight and thoroughly enjoyed recounting our wonderful experience with the wildlife during the day! But the adventure was not quite over yet! Afterall, we are on Kangaroo Island, and most of the Kangaroos sleep during the hot day time hours and get active at night, and so we too set out for a night time walk to check out the Roos!
We saw literally hundreds!! Wallabies in all size and Kangaroos in all sizes, some up to 2 m tall. The highlight of our night walk was to watch a boxing match between two male kangaroos in the soft glow of our flashlights from a distance of about 10 meters!! Can you believe that! I still cannot! The stuff you dream of as a kid!

Well, needless to say Kangaroo Island has been great so far! More tomorrow!

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Photos

Koala in the tree
isn't he the cutest?

Australian Sea Lion
Playing on the beach - chasing his mates