Australian Wildlife Time!

Given our lack of experience spotting Australian wildlife, we knew we'd need a little guidance if we wanted those cool kangaroo and echidna photos. There are actually a bunch of touring companies on Kangaroo Island - most of them are fairly pricey and almost all of them try to package their touring into 2-day or 3-day itineraries. This weekend happened to be Labor Day for Australia, so lots of domestic tourists had booked up a lot of the flights already by the time we'd gotten around to looking at tickets. As a result, we arrived mid-day by ferry and we were going to be leaving mid-day by ferry, leaving us with only a single "full" touring day, which wasn't enough for most of the touring companies.

Luckily though, there is a fairly new company on the island called "Hire-a-Guide", run by this Italian guy named Luca who used to be a guide with one of the other companies and then decided to strike it out on his own. His speciality was one-day touring -- perfect for us! Everyone we met yesterday on the island seemed to know Luca and had nothing but praise for his services so we were very excited for our day of touring.

Luca emailed us the day before to inform us that we'd actually be having the tour all to ourselves. Score! We had been worried that touring with other people would restrict how much time we could spend on the wildlife. Kangaroo Island is actually famous for a bunch of other things too -- like their Eucalyptus Oil, their Lingurian Bee Honey, their lighthouses, etc. We just wanted as much animal-time as possible.

Luca also informed us that we weren't going to be touring with him. Instead, it would be Tim. Turns out that Tim's regular job is actually being a tour guide with one of the other companies on the island (in fact, one that caters specifically to Americans). A private tour with him under his normal employer would have cost us at least 50% more than what we paid with Luca -- so double score for us!

We met Tim in the hotel lobby at 9am and quickly jumped in his 4WD SUV. Since we couldn't go off road with our vehicle, we told Tim we'd be particularly interested in checking out some wildlife areas that weren't accessible by bitumen.

Tim started things off with a stop at Duck Lagoon.

There was an amazing variety of birdlife here. Here's just a few pictures, namely, in order: a galah, a spoonbill, some black swans, a pair of crimson rosellas, and an egret.

 

 

 

 

 

After that, we went echidna hunting. Echidnas are notoriously shy when it comes to people -- Tim said he'd gone three days without seeing one. We were driving through one of their favorite areas though, so Tim told us to keep our eyes peeled. We passed a bunch of small humps that looked promising, but they all seemed to be orange rocks upon closer inspection. We whirled by this one rock that happened to look like a porcupine though, and I yelled out "stop!!" Ian didn't believe me at first, but we pulled back and lo and behold -- the rock was waddling away! 

We didn't get to see a ton of him before he waddled himself back into the bushes - but even so, it was pretty exciting to have caught a glimpse of him at all. Imagine our joy then at spotting yet another echidna about 10 minutes later. This one was less people-shy, and even waddled right in front of me as I was crouching to get a closer shot.

Tim decided that Ian might need some time to harass -- I mean -- inspect…the echidna more closely, so he set up for morning tea nearby. The extra time definitely paid off.

Eventually, Ian came back to the road and we enjoyed some delicious chocolate-chip and apricot spice bread along with some tea and coffee. Wildlife spotting works up an appetite!

Our next stop was a real treat -- Grassdale. Grassdale is actually a restricted national wildlife park that can only be accessed by licensed tour guides who have a key for the gates from the main road. It was originally owned by Lucy Edwards, who came over to Kangaroo Island to be with her husband, only to have him die unexpectedly and leave her with a newborn baby. To carry out his dream though, she decided not to return to Adelaide and instead stayed and cleared most of the land on her own. When she finally retired, she decided to sell the land to the National Parks -- even though there were definitely more lucrative private offers.

Grassdale is now prime Kangaroo-spotting territory. We were really lucky to have Tim though -- he figured that with the strong winds and rains that had been coming through, most of the kangaroo families would probably be seeking shelter. He was right.  There were a few other 4WD vehicles in the park with us, but they all stopped at the big fields with 4 or 5 kangaroos. We snapped a picture of them off in the distance, thinking this was as good as it would get.

Tim led us around the back though and suddenly there were dozens of kangaroos all around us.  

 

 

We had to all stay together so that we would appear as a single predator threat instead of 3 separate predator threats. They'd often stop and stare at us for a bit and then go on eating, having decided we weren't a threat.

 

Some of the kangaroos still didn't want to take any chances though and immediately bounced out of the clearing. 

The ones carrying joeys were particularly easy to spook.

After Grassdale, we made our way over to Hanson Bay, another part of the National Park system where Koalas were particularly plentiful. They have a big lane of eucalyptus trees, the Koala's only source of food, so the little guys can be spotted there year-round. Apparently a koala's total "movement" time is only 4 minutes per day. That's right, per DAY. The rest of the time, they sit in the trees and sleep. So once you spot one, you don't really run the risk of "losing your shot."

  

One of the koalas felt the need to impress. He was scampering all over the place. Little guy used up at least half of his daily movement allotment!

By now, it was time for lunch. We drove over to Flinders Chase National Park for lunch. On the way, we passed by some lookout points. The forest service had apparently tried to do some controlled burning a few years back that got a little out of control. As you can see, pretty much the entire forest was destroyed. Oh well, I guess it's a good thing Mother Nature knows how to replenish!

We also passed by some of the canola fields. Really brilliant colors. A lot of the oil that gets produced is actually shipped over to Japan and marketed as Kangaroo Island Canola Oil.  Ian will have to keep an eye out for that next time he has a conference in Tokyo!

 

We parked over in a little clearing by the Flinders Chase Visitor Center (where I had to stop for a little retail therapy). There were a few geese and ducks and even rumors of emus nearby.

  

Tim grilled up a couple succulent steaks (Luca's wife had apparently marinated them overnight). We also had some nice potato salad, some green salad, a really gooey garlic bread, and a cheese plate with some creamy brie and dried fruits and nuts.  All accompanied by a nice bottle of Shiraz. Ahh…this is how touring is meant to be done. Ten points to Luca for the food!

  

As you can see, our 4WD had gotten quite a bit dirtier since we left in the morning. I guess this is why Hertz doesn't let their cars off the roads! 

After lunch, we headed off for our last big animal site of the day: Admirals Arch and the fur seals that call that area home.

It was pretty blustery, so we had to take over under one of the caves for a bit while the storm passed. The nice thing about the strong winds was that rainstorms -- even the huge ones -- only lasted for 10 minutes or so -- and the quick storms meant that there are some brilliant rainbows.

Double rainbow! (what does it mean…???)

And then it was seal time! There are apparently 3 types of seals, one of which are sea lions (the ones we'd seen yesterday). Today, we saw the seals with the ears (apparently the third kind doesn't have any outside ears). 

Here's one that just came out of the water.

Ian thought this sign was funny...something about possibly missing a comma.

Seals are actually extremely violent -- they fight all the time over territory. And apparently, this is one place where size is the only thing that matters. :) The bigger seal always wins. If you've got two that are about the same size, they'll yell at each other for awhile, but eventually the slightly larger one will win out.

Our last stop of the day was at a purely scenic site -- the Remarkable Rocks.

The rocks are a bunch of granite formations perched in very interesting positions. Some of them are balancing on only three or four small points. 

 

With all the gusts of wind swirling around, it was a bit unsettling! But the colors made for some really nice photos.

And the shapes weren't bad either.

With one final photo memory, our day our touring had drawn to an end.

As we were about to head back onto the highway to begin the two hour drive back to our hotel in American River, Kangaroo Island gave us one last parting present: some quality photo time with a mom and her joey.  The wildlife gods must've known that Ian had yet to get that really good joey shot!

 We had been informed by Tim that the area around our hotel was actually prime wallaby viewing grounds. So after we got dropped off, we grabbed a couple of torches (Aussie for flashlights) and went in search of the wallabies. They had been too flighty during daytime to get any good shots so we weren't too hopeful about our chances at night either. Luck was on our side again though -- we found a ton of them feeding in the various fields around the hotel and Ian's SLR camera produced some impressive photos given the low lighting. All in all, great day for the animal lovers!

The Journey to Kangaroo Island

After skydiving yesterday, we had an uneventful trip over to Australia. Well, technically we missed our connection to Adelaide, but compared to skydiving that's pretty uneventful. Fortunately, in Australasia, they're quite cavalier about tossing you on the next plane to your destination. For domestic flights, there's sometimes not even any security! But maybe that's because it's difficult to sneak in anything dangerous given the seven kilogram carry-on weight limit. My camera bag is already five.

We finally got to Adelaide at 10pm and strolled over to the rental car counter. When the lady heard where we were going, her tone became stern and she informed us that our vehicle was not to be driven off the bitumen. Fortunately, Ming knew that bitumen was Australian for asphalt and that rental cars were not allowed on gravel roads, which have caused many a tourist to slide into unsuspecting kangaroos. The woman also added that the car would not be insured for night driving since much of Kangaroo Island's wildlife is nocturnal. We nodded, signed the paperwork and set off for the hotel.

We woke up to begin the wildlife portion of our trip. Kangaroo Island is the fourth most visited tourist destination in Australia, and most people come for the same reason we were coming: animals. The island is home to koala, possum, fur seal, sea lion, wallaby, tiger snake, and platypus... oh and kangaroo. There is even a lizard on the island. I think someone butchered the spelling of Iguana to come up with its name: the Goanna.

My favorite Kangaroo Island creature, however, has to be the Echidna. They are one of two monotremes in existence (the other being the platypus.) Monotreme is Greek for "one hole", but I'll spare you the details of the moniker's meaning except to say that this twist on the classic drainage-ditch-through-a-recreation-area engineering snafu is just the first piece of evidence that the echidna's intelligent designer spilled coffee on the blueprints. These little guys waddle around the island on all fours with feet that look as if they have been twisted around backwards. They have quills much like a porcupine, but can't release them. All of this combines to form a hapless creature the size of a football (Aussie rules, of course.) They are darn cute, though.

We had to get on the road by 6:30am to make the two hour drive down to the Kangaroo Island ferry. It sounds worse than it was, however, since we'd jumped back 3 hours on the flight. We had some coffee anyway, and set out ready to see some wildlife. The road down, with all its kangaroo crossing signs, looked like a promising place to start, so we were keeping our eyes peeled. We even slowed down for roadkill, but nothing was recognizably roo-like.

After about an hour of seeing nothing, and with the coffee still coursing through my veins, I think I started getting a little punchy. I suggested we come up with as many Kangaroo jokes as possible in the remaining hour. Here are some of the worst:

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Kanger.
Kanger-who?
Where!?!

I think our frustration at not seeing Kangaroos affected our comedy. Here's one that vents a different frustration:

Why did the wallaby kick her joey out of the pouch two months too early?
Because he exceeded the 7 kilogram carry-on limit.

The Qantas Airline has branded the Australian rugby team (the Wallabies) pretty heavily... to the point where the front of their jersey has them labeled as the Qantas Wallabies. So perhaps that joke would be funnier to an Australian rugby fan. I said perhaps. Anyway, moving on...

What do you call it when you run into a kangaroo taking her baby out for a spin?
Roo on a joey-ride.

If you're morose enough to have caught both puns above, you might appreciate my personal favorite and slightly less subtle joke:

Why did the kangaroo cross the road?
To get to the other si---BLOM-BLOMP!!!

Trust me, these are much funnier in person... with a lot of coffee... after a two hour drive. Unfortunately, we quickly ran out of this comedy gold, so things went from bad to worse. We resorted to poetry:

I came to view a kangaroo,
And wanna see a wallaby,
Can't spot for us a platypus?
You gotta be echidna me!

It was a long drive... arguably longer for Ming than for me. When we got to the ferry terminal, Ming darted out the car door in search of food and possibly better company. It was a rocky 45-minute ferry ride to Kangaroo Island. Our hotel room wasn't quite ready yet so we decided to check out Pelican Lagoon.



True to its name, we did spot one pelican floating around.





By the time we wrapped up the pelican photo shoot, our room was ready so we dropped off our bags and began the drive to Seal Bay. We made a quick detour for lunch. The most notable part of lunch was not the food, but the wildlife. Pro travel tip: the easiest way to spot a koala is to find a tree with a bunch of people underneath it looking up. That's how we found this guy:




Koalas can be pretty photogenic when they want to be. At other times, they look just like lumps of fur way up in a Eucalyptus tree.

After lunch, we continued on to Seal Bay. Again, the bay was true to it's name; there were indeed seals. Those two spots on the beach are seals.



Time to bust out the telephoto.



We were going to have to find some closer seals. We walked down the boardwalk a bit further and happened upon a large male right next to the path!

Turns out we caught him kissing his family goodbye before heading back out to hunt.



Apparently he could be gone for two or three days at a time.



There were a few more seals on the beach, but most of them just plop down on the sand and sleep, so there wasn't much more action. We decided to see if we could high-tail it back to Kingscote, a town not to far from our hotel in American River, where the island's famous pelican feeding was to begin at five. We made it just in time.



This daily occurrence is a little bit controversial in that the island policy with respect to wildlife is typically "observe, don't interact." This guy has been funding the feeding out of his own pocket for a long time though, and no one's really bothered to put a stop to it. The commentary he provides is entertaining and educational, and the whole spectacle makes for some fun photography.



Most of the birds crowd impatiently around the food bucket waiting for their easy meal.



Others were waiting in the water for the odd fish that was chucked in their direction.



Sometimes the food sunk too quickly.



These poor pelicans are too buoyant to dive, despite giving it their best.



When the feeding was done the pelicans hung around long enough to realize that there would be no more handouts, then floated or flew off into the sunset.



We took the short drive back to our hotel to eat quick dinner before our nocturnal tour began. Since we couldn't drive after sunset, we were being driven around by a guide. Chris, a nice older gentleman, was to be our driver and guide. There were originally four booked for the tour, but it turned out that Ming and I were the only ones that showed up, so it turned into a private tour. We were on our way to see penguins in particular, but did a short drive around the grounds first. Turns out you don't have to go too far from the hotel to see wildlife. Here's a possum we spotted.



We even saw our first few kangaroos and wallabies, but unfortunately they were too far from our lights to give us good photos. When we got to the penguins usual hideout there were far fewer than Chris had seen in a long time, causing him to wonder if a predator had been hanging around the are that day. Here's one that hadn't been scared off.



You need to use red light with these guys because they hunt in blue light and a standard flashlight can disturb their vision.

We wrapped up our nocturnal tour and went back to the hotel for the night.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad