Kangaroo Island, a hundred miles long and thirty-six wide, sits a few miles off the South Australian coast. It's a half hour from Adelaide on Regional Express. Their motto: "We fly to places you've never heard of." (Okay, I made that up. But they're welcome to use it.) I was there to see wildlife. Which they got. People? Not so much.
I was met on arrival by my tour guides, who whisked my fellow
adventurers and me off to the west side of the island. Most of KI
has been taken over by agriculture; Flinders Chase National Park on
the west side is how the whole island looked when Europeans first
arrived.
And how pleased they must have been by the vista at left! Beautiful
green fields as far as the eye could see, just perfect for crops!
What they couldn't tell until they got closer is that those fields
aren't fields at all; they're the tops of trees! With native
forests of such uniform height and coloring, theirs was a natural
mistake. One that would lead South Australia's first settlement to
be abandoned after four years.
We stopped for a few pictures of the coast, which is nice if you
like that sort of thing. And to get our first glimpse of the
Remarkable Rocks, which were to be our next stop. The rock at right
stands about twenty feet high; I stood under the overhang at the
left with plenty of clearance. (Yes, I know I'm short. Let's move
on.) The rocks were shaped by wind and rain over millions of
years. And they're perched precariously on just a few points each,
the rain having eroded much of their bases. I'd call them
remarkable, but that would be redundant.
Our next stop was Admiralty Arch, a passage water had eroded from
the limestone. It's a prime location to see some Australian sea
lions. And they were out in force, sunning themselves on the rocks
and conserving energy in that special pedipod way. There was also
the corpse of a whale that had wedged itself into the cliffs;
attempts to get it loose having failed, the authorities were
debating their next step. I guess they weren't anxious to repeat
the experience of the
Oregon
Highway Division.
After that it was time for lunch. We found a quiet spot in the bush
and, while our guides got everything ready, wandered down the road
looking for koalas. Since they mostly sleep during the day, we were
all craning our necks and hoping to spot one high in the branches of
a gum tree. Needless to say, we were thrilled to spot the fellow at
right, who chose a perch within range of my camera's lens.
It's funny about koalas. To tourists like me they're a big part of
Australia's appeal. Heck, Qantas used one as a mascot for years!
But to the locals they're kind of a pain. They're incredibly fussy
eaters, living on the leaves of just a few kinds of eucalypts. And
with loss of habitat and their own increasing numbers, they're
eating those trees to death. There's an effort to reduce the number
of koalas on the island through a catch/sterilize/release program.
That'll mean less damage, but of course fewer koalas for the
tourists. Like a lot of ecological issues in Australia, it's a
delicate balancing act. Good thing we don't have ecological
problems like that in America.
We stopped at the visitor center on our way out of the park to check
out the exhibits, the shop and the facilities. Waiting at the coach
for the rest of the crew to gather, I got my first close encounter
of the trip with a couple of kangaroos. These guys were experienced
at begging for handouts. Fortunately, I know better. And our
guides were pretty explicit as to why giving handouts to the roos is
a bad idea, that it interferes with their proper diet and with their
survival skills.
A few minutes later, were were off to see some kangaroos in the
wild. Our destination was Lucy's farm, or rather what used to be
Lucy's farm, before she died and her son decided there just had to
be more to life than a little farmhouse without electricity or
running water. Now it's a big open field, one that's very popular
with kangaroos if the amount of roo poo we saw is any indication.
And yes, we saw a couple of dozen roos in our walk around the
fields. Always at a distance; these guys haven't made the
transition to a service-based economy.
After that it was time to be dropped off at our lodging for the night. I was at a little hotel in the town of American River, which isn't actually a river. After dinner I borrowed a flashlight from my hosts and went looking for wildlife. I'd been told KI is teeming with wallabies. Unfortunately, I'd seen only one that day; due to avian predators, wallabies prefer to stay out of sight during the day. But night's their time to party; I must have encountered fifty during my short walk to the post office and back. No photographs, alas; it wouldn't have been right to use flash on such night-adapted creatures.
Oh, and there was another bonus to my nighttime walk. Thanks to a lack of light pollution, I was able to see more stars than I imagined possible. And not just individual stars. For the first time in a long time I could see the smear of the Milky Way, the way it appears in astronomy books but never in real life.
Next morning I was up bright and early to take pictures of American
River's not-river. (It's really an inlet from the ocean, like the
rio in Rio de Janeiro.) I'm not used
to so much peace, being able to walk down a town's one and only
street and not have to worry about traffic. And having no company
but the birds. The water was calm this morning. Everything was
calm and so very quiet. Suddenly it was easy to imagine the island
as it was before settlement.
Day two's touring began with a run to the south coast of the
island and the appropriately named Seal Bay. The beach was well
populated with sea lions, which ranged widely in size, coloring and
level of activity. We were able to get pretty close as long as we
stayed together; I was told that they don't see people in groups as
a threat. It was easy to assign roles: the playful youngsters, the
pup whining for its mom, the alpha male pushing younger males around
just to prove who's boss. And of course all the middle agers
sleeping it off after a hard couple of days at work.
Wandering back to the north central part of the island, we went into
the bush in hope of spotting the rare glossy black cockatoo. No
luck there, I'm afraid. We saw quite a few of the sheoak trees
whose seeds provide the cockatoo's food supply. Including some that
had been broken into, evidence that they'd been in the
neighborhood. Still, we did get to see quite a few wallabies during
our wander. Never in the open; these guys weren't about to become
dinner for some eagle. But if we could avoid making too much noise
stomping around, we could get close enough for pictures. I'm sure
they heard us coming. A bunch of middle-aged city folk; how could
they not?
Our next destination was the north coast. Getting there was quite a
hairy ride, pushing our 4WD up and down hills in a way that would
give most SUV owners pause. They certainly had us all wondering if
our guide wasn't the least bit mad, especially when he parked within
spitting distance of the cliff edge. Once I got past the challenge
of opening the van door against a
15° incline, I had to agree
that the views were worth what it took to get there. We even
spotted a couple of kangaroos foraging in a ravine down the sloping
hill, another reminder that there's wildlife in some pretty unlikely
places.
Our last stop of the day was a drive down a mostly unoccupied beach
for afternoon tea, which we enjoyed on the tailgate of our van. I
guess that's one advantage of an island with plenty of coastline and
not so many people. We also had the spectacle of watching one
driver help another get his car unstuck from the beach. Yep, if I
lived in a place like Kangaroo Island I'd definitely want an
SUV.
Pretty soon it was time to leave. We dropped off the rest of our
group at their B&B; they had another day on the island. Me, I
was off back to Adelaide. And in the morning I'd leave on the last
leg of my trip: the opal mining town of
Coober Pedy.
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