Advertisement
Published: December 1st 2009
Quad Bikes
Up bright and early, a few group members went for a fun ride around the area.The second day on our Kangaroo Island tour was just as busy as the first. A few of our group members went for an early morning ATV drive. The rest of us were able to enjoy an extra hour’s worth of sleep, so it was an even trade. Once all back together, we went to Seal Bay. This is where a colony of Australian Sea-lions live. It’s a rough life being a sea-lion. They spend days out in the water hunting and feeding without any real rest (for fear of being eaten by sharks). Once satisfied, they return to the beach where they sleep for the next few days and gather their strength. And then it starts all over again! We were able to go right onto the beach (with a tour guide) to see the sea-lions, taking some great photos. We needed to keep at least 10m away though, because even though it wasn’t breeding season (where all the males become very aggressive) the strength behind these animals is still incredible and we don't want to disturb their rest.
We then checked out the Kelly Hill Caves. These caves were created from ancient sand dunes, which make them fairly
Seal Bay
The morning of our second day, we visited Seal Bay, which is home to a colony of Australian Sea-lions! unique among the caving world. For Hillary and me, this was similar to what we’d seen in Augusta, but it was cool to explore another cave. Our tour guide was a hard core cave explorer, and had even discovered his own section of cave not too far from this site. After the caves, it was time for another hike. We trekked along the Hanson Bay Hike seeing all kinds of great wildlife, like kangaroos, goannas and an echidna! The trail led to a beach where we met up with our tour guide again.
On the way to our hostel that night, we stopped at a koala reserve. These were wild koala, but the area is protected. We saw quite a few of the cuddly animals, though many of them were high up in the trees. They can be hard to spot, but I’m sure that’s the point since they sleep the majority of the day making them easy prey. We found a mother and baby snacking on some leaves, which was great because sometimes it just seems so rare to see one moving. We also then spotted a koala running along the ground to another tree! This was an
Seal Bay - 02
From the information centre, we walked down the long boardwalk to the beach. Boardwalks keep tourists from trampling around too much on the natural habitat. even rarer treat, which prompted our tour guide to jump up and down and point in excitement. Our last little surprise was the koala sitting on a very low branch in a tree. You’d think you’d want to get as high as possible to keep away from predators, but I guess this little guy didn’t get the memo.
That night we had a nice big dinner, and spent much of the evening just chatting away. This was one of those rare tour groups where we actually had an Australian in the group (usually the groups mostly consist of Brits, Germans and Canadians), so we spent a bit of time prodding her with all those “Australia” questions we’d been accumulating. Things like “Why is Burger King called Hungry Jacks?”, “What’s the different between autogas and petrol?” and Hillary’s biggest complaint: “Why does tomato sauce (ketchup) always cost extra in restaurants?!”
Kevin (and Hillary)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.125s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 14; qc: 73; dbt: 0.0794s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
