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