Kangaroo Island
Trip Start
Oct 14, 2005
1
19
71
Trip End
??? ??, 2006
Kangaroo Island, Australia
Thursday, December 15, 2005
I visited kangaroo Island as an organised tour with Surf and Sun www.surfnsun.com.au which I would highly recommend, it is quite an expensive place to visit on your own, and with no public transport, and very few road signs to the places of interest, it would be easy to get lost. The guide we had was very good, knew a lot about the local wildlife and was a good laugh, he was also very relaxed and never in a hurry to get us from one point of interest to another, allowing plenty of time for photos and fun.
the highlights of this trip included a visit to an Australian sea lion colony, which is a nature reserve but we were permitted to go down onto the beach, about 10m from the sea lions, who did not mind our presence as long as we kept our distance, they have been known to charge if you get too close. We also visited a New Zealand seal colony, but we were not allowed that close to them, but we could watch from a boardwalk, and take pictures. The seals were great to just observe as they played about in the surf, sliding down the rocks into the water, or getting caught napping by a large wave from the sea, I would have been happy to watch them for hours.
We also got to observe some fairy penguins at night, a very small breed of penguin that come in to the rocks at night, very sensitive to light there was no flash photography, and the only torches had a red filter to protect them, but again, like the seals they were great to just watch them playing about "fighting" and "wrestling" among the rocks.
We were also lucky enough to see koalas, echidnas, possums, and surprisingly enough kangaroos, and their cousins the wallabies, in their natural environment. Koalas being the most exciting of all, extinct for a while on Kangaroo island they were re-introduced about 20 years ago, and in this protected environment the numbers have grown so much that Kangaroo Island is one of the best places to see them in the wild.
As well the abundance of Fauna on KI the were also some rocks that were quite remarkable, so much so they are called the "Remarkable Rocks", formed in a similar way to the Devil's Marbles, but looking a lot stranger with all the weather and sea erosion creating over hangs that look almost as if the rocks are dripping and melting, apparently Daniel "Harry Potter" Radcliffe had been filming there recently for an up coming film the December Boys.
Also on our tour was a trip to Vivonne beach, voted the best beach in Australia, criteria included remoteness and cleanness, so as you can imagine it was a very remote clean beach that had good waves and was virtually deserted, sand boarding down some dunes, and a trip to Kelly Hill Caves.
I also managed to get a sound out of a didgeridoo that sounded very close to what it should sound like, I was pleased with that, on the down side I also got bitten to death all over my feet, so if you are there be sure to get your deet on.
Ben
