Up the Creek with a paddle...

The final activity in our action adventure package deal was kayaking, so that’s what we had arranged for this morning. This involved another drive to Vivonne Bay. As we got there a few minutes early, we drove out to the Vivonne Bay jetty to check out the view.

Once we were kitted up with all the gear we launched the kayaks into the Harriet River. We then had up to four hours to paddle upstream and back.

Our first goal was to meander to the road bridge and paddle under it. From there, we were told there is almost guaranteed sightings of koalas to be had.

The trees were not too big and before we knew it, we’d spotted a couple of the docile balls of fur. Photos were tricky as we only had our phones with us – in zip lock bags, whipping them out for the occasional photo, paranoid about dropping them overboard!

We paddled back to the beach where we got the esky out of the car and ate lunch. The kids then enjoyed another paddle just in the area near our launching spot.

We dropped off the equipment and then drove back down to Vivonne Beach. Our goal was to walk about 1 km along the beach to retrieve a geocache. It was a lovely walk, with more dramatic cloud out to sea, adding to the colours of the scenery. Rounding one rocky cape we spotted a large hive of bees and their honeycomb. If you could harvest that honey I’m sure it would have a salty flavour being so close to the blustery Southern Ocean!

We found the cache. An interesting one wrapped up in canvas, a home made wooden box with the story of Captain Baudin and his exploration of this area. The log book pointed out the change in our world... by finding this cache we had utilised far superior technology (GPS and satellite navigation) compared to those early explorers who largely navigated with a compass and the moon!

On the way back towards the car park we climbed to what looked like a new lookout for some photos.

We called in at Kingscote on the way home for a bit of shopping. Picked up some essential supplies as well as a couple of treats and souvenirs.

We drove back to American River and enjoyed a relaxing wine on the verandah, taking in the serenity. Other than the birds, there is absolutely no noise in the area… well except for the kids of course!

Our time on KI is rapidly coming to a close and tomorrow will be our last full day. We still have a couple of places we want to check out before packing up and moving out. Stay tuned.

Chasing Flinders #2

There is no trip to Kangaroo Island without a visit to the southern section of the Flinders Chase National Park. It is so popular and well visited that the national park people are cashing in and charge to visit this section.

So after a 114 km drive - all on bitumen - we found ourselves at the fancy looking Flinders Chase Visitor Centre. They quickly extracted $28 for a day pass so that we could venture on. J commented that it was quite chilly in the visitor's centre, to which the rugged up ranger replied 'budget cuts - we're not allowed to turn on the heating!'

From there it was a few more km's to the most recognisable landmark on KI, Remarkable Rocks. Ethan asked why they were called that, and stated it was not a good name as remarkable is an opinion word and they might not be remarkable at all. I encouraged him to go in with an open mind!

The tour director, AKA, me, got us to Remarkable Rocks before the hordes descended... in fact, I got us there and we had the whole place to ourselves! Apparently it took 500 million years for the wind and rain to erode these giant granite boulders into the works of art they are today. So it only seemed fitting that we should enjoy them and photograph them without other people crawling all over them and photo-bombing us!

I asked Ethan after we'd explored the rocks whether the name 'Remarkable' was an apt name or not and he conceded they could rightly be called remarkable in his opinion!

By the time we were ready to move on, lots of others began to arrive, in fact the car park was quite crowded once we left. Our photos just would not have been the same if we had been a little later. We stopped at a viewing platform on the drive back out for this view back towards the Remarkable Rocks.

Next we drove to Admiral's Arch, another well known spot in this corner of the island. It is a natural limestone arch. It is also the home to a colony of NZ fur seals - different from the sea lions of Seal Bay, although I would be pushed to tell them apart. Seemingly against the information we got there, these critters also had little external ears.

The coast here was very dramatic, pounding waves, rugged cliffs and smoothed boulders with water rushing over them. The seals oblivious to the fury of the water and the accompanying noise as they dozed on the rocky ledges. The only thing that I noticed that differed between these guys and the sea lions, was they don't cuddle up in little groups, preferring to keep to themselves!

Unlike Remarkable Rocks, there were dozens if not hundreds of people here. The scenery was all the other side of boardwalks, so no photo-bombing problems.

Earlier in our time on KI I spoke about pronouncing place names. The impressive light house we visited next had a name that I still have no idea how to pronouce. It's called: Cape Du Couedic... say it how you like.

The impressive light house was built of local stone, but not until 1909, making it the youngest of the three on Kangaroo Island. We particularly liked its impressive entrance, with a grand staircase and detailed stone arched doorway.

We returned to the civilization of the Vistor's Centre. We met a mum and dad cape barren goose with a brand new chick, plus a koala up a tree between the car and the front door. We looked around at the souvenirs and then enjoyed lattes, pots of tea and hot chocolates.

Due to popular demand we called in at Little Sahara on the way back towards American River. The kids had a blast on sand boards - we got three this time as they seem to prefer these to the toboggans. We almost had the place to ourselves and it was great to see the kids take off where they left off last time and make sand boarding look relatively easy. A family of about a dozen, possibly of Indian background decided the sand where we were 'worked better' than the other 3 km's of dunes and promptly started trying to toboggan right where we were! That was rude, so I let them know. One of them said the sand does not work anywhere else, I suggested that perhaps it was them and not the sand! Drawing on all my geological expertise in sand - largely gained in the sand pit as a youngster, I also suggested that all the sand here was the same. They reluctantly moved back out of our way... not too far of course as this was the superior sand!

As we were leaving, to his credit, one of the Indian dads did come and apologise - and it seems the sand started to improve as his kids began to master the toboggans! It's amazing how you can train sand!

It was only another 50 km back 'home'!