Kangaroo Island, part 3

Day 2 of our Kangaroo Island tour started at Hanson Bay Sanctuary. This was a great place to see the native animals. We saw lots of koalas! Koala is an Aboriginal word, meaning 'no water.' The koala diet consists of 100% eucalyptus leaves, and nothing else! They don't even drink water, relying on the moisture in the eucalyptus leaves.

It was weird (weird in a good way) to see animals here, living in the wild, that we've never seen outside a zoo!

All of the 1 million kangaroos and wallabies on the island are nocturnal. So they weren't running everywhere, all the time. First things in the morning, though, there were several still out eating.

We were warned not to get too close, as this could scare the kangaroos. This is particularly important for mothers and their joeys; if the joey is out of mom's pouch and mom gets spooked by a human and flees, this could lead to her abandoning her joey altogether.

Do you see the joey hiding in this pic? 

Next up: Remarkable Rocks! They are behind us, to the left. There were so many scenic points on the island and our tour guide was great to let us hop out and take pics at all of them.

Erosion is pretty amazing - I wonder how many millions of years it took to form the rocks into these shapes. Our guide informed us that the soil surrounding these rocks will eventually wash away, and Remarkable Rocks will become an island someday in the very distant future.

It was fun to be able to climb on all these rocks! 

This rock was about to fall, so the boys stepped in to hold it up for a while :)

This was maybe my favorite place in KI. With so many cool places, it's hard to choose a favorite. Kangaroo Island ROCKS!!

Kangaroo Island, part 2

After lunch at the eucalyptus oil refinery, we headed to Seal Bay Conservation Park. This is home to many Australian Sea Lions. This place was very pretty, but also VERY cold and VERY windy.

We walked down a long plank walkway to the water, hoping to see many seals and sea lions. We saw maybe a dozen, and they were all napping in the sun. 

We went all the way down to the beach, and it was so cold that I wasn't disappointed when we didn't see any seals emerging from the water and headed up away from the wind. However, Ked did spot one emerging from the water right before we made our way back up to the warm gift shop!

We were all pretty tired by this point, so were happy to head to our destination for the night: a lodge at Vivonne Bay. Lest you think that Kangaroo Island is full of luxury accommodations, here is where we stayed:  

I'll say this pic kind of makes this place look a little dumpy, but it was actually quite nice. The rooms were clean and quiet, and there was a very nice common space that was entirely furnished by IKEA :)  Kangaroo Island is not generally a luxury resort type of place - it is a very rural island with lots of rustic charm. It does have paved roads, but the majority of the roads on the island look like this:

Also, much of the water that people use on the island is rain water! We frequently saw these kinds of storage tanks near most dwellings: 

(Along with signs by every sink reminding you not to use too much water!)

Anyway, after we unpacked, we wanted to walk down to the bay before it got dark. We took this path and it was a fairly quick hike down to the bay. We also saw a wallaby along this trail!

Vivonne Bay! Can you see ends of the double rainbow?

More cold times at the ocean :)

 

We had a nice dinner, and our tour guide made a fire, but we were so exhausted from our long day that we went to bed early. And then the next morning we woke up and saw this koala mommy and her joey right in our backyard!

Kangaroo Island, part 1

Two weekends ago, while Mom and Dad were visiting, we had the opportunity to take a 2 day tour of Kangaroo Island! KI is about a 2 hour trip from our house in Adelaide. We first got on a bus VERY early on Saturday morning, Sept 15, and took a 1 1/2 hour trip down to Cape Jarvis, where we caught the ferry to the island.

Here's a map of the island, which includes several places we visited. We started our tour in Penneshaw, and stuck mostly to the south side of the island. Most of eastern KI is farmland, while much of the western side is national parklands.

First up:

Here's Rob:

Rob is a 4th generation Kangaroo Island farmer, and has 1600 head of sheep. He shears them all by himself! There are roughly 750,000 sheep on the island (vs. 4500 human residents). Sheep on KI are Merino sheep, mainly raised for their wool; not their meat. This was quite different for us Iowa folk! Rob used a hanging brace thing to help support his back while he sheared:

All the wool comes off in one piece, and then he throws it onto a  big circular table thing where he sorts it. Wool from different parts of the sheep is more valuable than other parts, so it all has to all be sorted before it's shipped off in bales to be sold.

Next up: the first of many amazing views off the southern coast of Kangaroo Island. These were taken at Pennington Bay.

Eli and Micah: 

Me and Ked: 

Dad and Mom: 

Do we all look a little freezing? Well, we were. In fact, this day was the coldest day we'd had since arriving in Australia. It was around 52 degrees, windy, and rainy. Fortunately, the rain seemed to clear off when we'd reach each of our destinations, so it could have been a lot worse. Even with the weather, I'd do it all again - Kangaroo Island will likely go down as one of our favorite parts of our time in Australia!

Next up, we headed to a eucalyptus oil refinery. This place honestly wasn't all that spectacular, but the boys loved it because they got to see baby kangaroos! The owner took abandoned/orphaned joeys and raised them. They each had their own little baskets where they happily curled up. 

Here is Rabbit (named by Micah, so I don't know if this is its official name or not):

And this is Bambi: 

That's enough for now - more to come!

Just some fun on a zipline at a park

A very "Australia" kind of day

For the last week and a half, we've been lucky to have visitors here in Adelaide! My parents came to visit earlier on, and now Ryan and Tiffany (my brother and sister-in-law) are here. We've loved having company, but I guess it has thrown off my blogging schedule a little bit :) So I'll kind of work in reverse order as I catch up over the next few days. 

Today we had a quintessential Australia day with a trip to Cleland Wildlife Park. This is quite a ways outside the city, winding up through the hills to the east of the city. On the way there, our bus made a quick stop at Mt Lofty, where we had a beautiful view of Adelaide, the city we've really grown to love over these past months.

I'm not sure if you can see this, but the entire city center is surrounded by park lands (look for the darker green square). Adelaide is the only city in the world designed this way! The blue beyond the city is the ocean - one of our favorite things about living in Adelaide.

Here we are at Mt. Lofty:

Then: off to Cleland Wildlife Park. This is kind of like a zoo, but not a traditional one. It is very hilly, green, and open. AND you can get up close with the animals! Here we are with Willow, a male koala:

Most of the animals aren't in pens, and they can roam freely throughout large open spaces. Obviously they are also used to being around people, which allowed us to get up close with them. Here is Micah FEEDING A KANGAROO!! There are many different breeds of kangaroos throughout Australia, and this one is a Kangaroo Island Kangaroo. We visited Kangaroo Island last weekend, which I'll post more about later.

Eli feeding a wallaby! I didn't notice, but this wallaby had a joey in her pouch too!

Want to know the difference between a wallaby and a kangaroo? Kangaroos are generally larger, and their bone structure extends all the way through their tail, so they can use their tail for balance. Wallabies have no bones in their tail and it kind of just drags along behind them.

Kangaroo:

We saw lots of common Australia animals, including a rainbow lorikeet:

An echidna:

And a wombat!

This was Micah's favorite; the potoroo. While he exclaimed, "Aww, so CUTE!" every time he saw one, we all agreed Aunt Melanie would NOT like the potoroo, as it looks kind of like a mouse, but is the size of a large guinea pig, and they scurried about everywhere, to the point you could have almost stepped on one.

Good times at Cleland Wildlife Park!

Fun with Grandparents

I will write a much more detailed post later, but here's a snapshot of today with Nana and Papa, at the Botanic Gardens and then at Glenelg Beach!

Just another Saturday at the ocean