2013 Travel Dispatch #15 (Kangaroo Island)

It's hard catching up. Posting at the end of the day while all the memories are still fresh is ever so much easier to do. Posting several days after-the-fact, especially while fully engaged in new adventures, gets much trickier. Relying on these depleted memory cells is a considerable challenge. We're in Uluru now (which is the epitome of “the middle of nowhere”), taking hikes and getting up at ridiculous hours for sunrise viewings, and having to harken back to the discoveries and revelations three or four days back (while it's fun to reinforce the memories) just gets damn confusing. I guess the answer there is to never go anyplace that is not fully connected to the 21^st Century – oh, how dreadfully dull. While it's obvious it's just best to keep up, that's clearly not going to be possible. Wifi from a live-aboard dive boat in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef? Maybe not.

We traveled to Kangaroo Island (hereafter referred to as “KI”) in the company of our wonderful friends from near Melbourne and arrived at our digs on KI just in time to enjoy the setting of the sun. Our time on KI was very full and very enjoyable. Not at all at the pace of the fellow below.

KI is not a little island. Our first full day on the island we traveled somewhere between three and four hundred kilometers, that would be 185 to 250 miles for you non-metric types. And, or course, it wasn't all drive time, because there were a number of interesting destinations to be gawked at en-route. Our first big stop of the day was at Seal Bay. Now I know you can go to Loon Bay in the Adirondacks and never see a loon, but Seal Bay is pretty predictable and satisfying. The first shot of today's dispatch is from there as is the one below.

This is a shot of the beach at Seal Bay with Australian Sea Lions lolling about in the sand. It was the first time on the trip I was really glad I had a longer lens with me. From there we stopped at a place that specialized in raptors. While there we ate a ridiculously expensive lobster sandwich and got to meet this guy – an immature wedge-tail eagle.

One critter we were always on the lookout for was the Koala. We finally had a sighting but they were not in a very photogenic mood. This was the best I could get of a mother and a cub high in a gum tree.

One of the more remarkable stops we made was at a place at the very end of the island called, no kidding, Remarkable Rocks. And they actually were. I got a lot of nice shots there; but I'll not burden you with more than one just to give you an idea of the scale and nature of the site, sorry for the redundancy but pretty remarkable really.

Our next stop was at a place called Admiral's Arch. But you're not going to see any pictures of that because it's really just a big jaggy window to the sea and on the way there we passed by a bunch of New Zealand Fur Seals disporting themselves in a very active surf. They were much more fun to watch than the more sedate and docile and downright sleepy sea lions.

That milky looking water the seal is diving into is really a roiling, churning, crashing wave. And they were playing in it like it was a kid's wading pool. To them it probably is. Great fun to watch.



The next morning, a fearless, hungry kangaroo came by to check out the supposedly protected plantings in the front yard of the beach house we were in. I warned you about more kangaroos.

This was just an unusual and striking plant we noticed as we strolled the little village of Penneshaw while we were waiting for the ferry to take us back to the mainland.

Here's a snap of another passenger waiting in the queue for the ferry. Great look for the intrepid traveler. I've been encouraging Fran to adopt the look for our trip out on the dive boat. She hasn't shown much enthusiasm – yet, I'll keep trying.

Next stop, Adelaide -- on the blog. As for us, we're almost done with Uluru and heading off to King's Canyon in an hour or so.  Be back with that soon – I hope, at least before we venture out to the Reef.

Photography by Burdette