Kangaroo Island Adventures

April 3-6, 2008 – The Return 2 Oz saga continues

Mike and Karen continue to have the “time of their lives” We spent a lot of time on the road today Thursday April 3^rd. We stopped along the beautiful Great Ocean Road and saw an area called The Crags, interesting limestone outcroppings, beautiful ocean views, great waves, and the most beautiful blue-green water. The landscapes, when off of the coast were pasture lands, cattle, sheep and yes the ever present Eucalyptus trees. We did see quite a few pine trees too. We called it a night in Kingston. The home of Larry the giant Lobster. Gotta love those Aussies and their crazy senses of humor.

Friday morning we got a nice early start and headed towards Adelaide. We were leaving state of Victoria and going into South Australia. Interesting – there was time change between states, a half of an hour. We traveled the 300 or so kilometers rather quickly, good road and few if any road construction slow downs. We actually got into Adelaide about mid day and were able to navigate ourselves into the CBD (central business district) and procure a trip to Kangaroo Island for the next 2 days. We drove further south down the Fleureiu Peninsula. We camped in a small town of Normanville, about 25 miles from the port of Cape Jarvis where we will sail from.

Saturday morning April 5^th, we got early and packed, cleaned and readied the motor home for return on Sunday night after our return from KI. We spent two days on a wonderful escorted tour. We traveled over 750 km on the island with a “local” real Aussie driver, who kept us laughing the entire 2 days. We saw an amazing number on very interesting sights. It was also quite nice to have someone else doing the driving. We were up and off the coach every few minutes to visit a new stop. We saw beautiful coast lat Pennington Bay, Vivonne Bay – a few boats out fishing. We stopped at an Eucalyptus Distillery, very interesting they take the leaves of only a certain kind of gum tree, boil it, distill it and it is used for a variety of applications: disinfecting, removing laundry stains and odors, removing sticky residue, good for aching muscles ….. We then went to an awesome birds of prey show put on by Dave Irwin, cousin of the famous crocodile hunter. He had birds of all sizes, shapes and description doing tricks – we saw kookaburras, kestrels, owls, and huge sea eagles. We then traveled a bit further down the road to Seal Bay where we were able to walk out amongst the Sea Lions. They were lazing about and enjoying the sun. We finished the day with a visit to the Parndana Wild Life Park where they had a good presentation of native animals and last stop at the Island Pure Sheep Dairy where we saw sheep being milked and tasted their feta style cheeses. Wow! What a great day!! We stayed the night at the Ozone Hotel, built in 1909 in Kingscote, and did a Fairy Penguin night-time tour.

Sunday April 6, 2008 – back on the coach with Les, our driver & tour guide, and # 1 interesting character. He has lived on Kangaroo Island since the early 1950s when his family relocated from the “main land” South Australia through a program that the SA government ran for soldiers who had fought in World War II. The soldiers; who were interested, were entered into a lottery for 100 acres. Les’ dad’s name was drawn and he, his older brother, mum and dad went to farm on Kangaroo Island. With a few more than 4000 residents on the KI, Les knows almost everybody there; could tell us about who lived where, what they do or did. A very personalized tour to say the least. We saw a lot more today: the Kelly Hills Caves with some very STEEP stairs down and up out of the limestone caves. We had a drive through Flinders Chase National Park which was devastated by a big brush fire (caused by multiple lighting strikes) earlier this year. A large Erickson Air Crane (home base is in Southern Oregon) named Elvis helped them control the fires. Much of the Eucalyptus Forest was burned, but it was very interesting to see that most of the trees were re-generating already, gum trees seem to do well after being burned, according to Les the hotter the fire, the quicker they start to grow back. We then hiked up an amazing structure of granite rock out-cropping called the “Remarkables”. These strangely sculptured rocks seem to just pop out of the surrounding limestone floor, and are the only granite rocks on KI. The last stop of the day was the Admiral’s Arch, a beautiful spot along the south coast of KI where we walked down a long boardwalk to see the arch, home to many New Zealand fur seals. This was a wonderful experience, so glad we took the time to experience it. Took the ferry back across the “Back Steps” Bay. We got back into the city of Adelaide, got the Maui moho returned and into our hotel by mid-night. Stayed tuned for fun on the road!!.