Kangaroo Island Part the Second

On Thursday we had some yummy Multi-Grain Cheerios for breakfast (in Oz it’s just “Cheerios”) and were picked up by a Sealink tour bus for a day-long tour of Kangaroo Island.

Now, the island is bigger than you think, even after you establish that it’s big. About 100 km long, it would comfortably wrap around the greater Austin area, so it’s a good hour’s drive from one corner to another, even with barren roads. The population, maybe 10,000ish, is scattered far and wide. The island is pleasantly devoid of hyper tourist joints like, say, Cairns.

The weather was, I think the word is, “wild.” It jumped from sunny to windy to pouring rain in mere minutes. The guide used the old cliché, “If you don’t like the weather on Kangaroo Island, just wait five minutes.” I’ve heard this said many times about Texas. Thing is, on K.I., it’s true.

Our first stop was a tour of a eucalyptus distillery, where they produce eucalyptus oil. (This was about as exciting as you might think it’d be.) The highlight was Roxy, an eight-month-old orphan kangaroo who lounged in her basket and happily chewed on eucalyptus leaves we gave her.

Next: the Kelly Hill Caves, so-named after either a person or a horse (depending on whom you believe) that discovered them in the 1880s by falling to their death. We waited a few cold impatient minutes at the entrance to the cave before our cheerful tour guide showed up, unlocked the door, and allowed us down the steep metal stairs into the limestone cavern.

The caves were formed only about 500,000 years ago, making them rather young and small by cave standards. Still, we made our way about 20 meters underground, snapping blurry pictures of pointy stalactites the whole way. Our guide was a genuine cave geek, and asked us each where we were from, immediately naming caves in the area. (Closest she could get to Texas was Carlsbad Caverns; I’ll give her credit.) The cave did a good job not going with chintzy lighting. Weirdest thing we saw was a six-inch-long stalactite that impossibly curved back UP partway, against the laws of gravity. Even the guide had no idea how it was made.

After 45 minutes of cave-wandering, we climbed up and out of the caves and got a mediocre barbecue lunch, then headed into Flinder’s Chase National Park.

Fully a third of Kangaroo Island is a protected park or wildlife area of some sort. The biggest chunk is Flinder’s Chase. We headed past the visitor’s center toward the southwestern coast of the island, home of the Remarkable Rocks.

More on those in a second. A sad side story was the fire that had recently - like, last week - gutted this corner of the island. An attempt at a controlled burn of 50-100 acres got out of control and destroyed 1,500 acres, killing much of the scenery and leveling the local ecosystem for the next 20 years or so. So as we hopped off the bus at a scenic vantage point to see the Remarkable Rocks in the distance, we were just as amazed at the hillside full of blackened shrubs stretching into the distance.

Back to these rocks. Remarkable Rocks is a natural formation of granite (formerly liquid hot MAG-MA) tacked onto the island, which is mostly limestone. The top part of the granite dome has over zillions of years been eaten away by water and wind to make a really really odd Stonehenge-looking bunch of rocks perched on the edge of the Southern Ocean, with nothing between us and Antarctica to the south.

The bus parked and we followed a boardwalk out toward the rocks. Several signs warned us about the danger of straying off the edge of the dome and into the water (two tourists were killed, trying to rescue another jackass tourist who fell, only three years ago). The warnings seemed especially pertinent given the wind. Our driver called it “a little sea breeze” - in this case gusting over 50 km per hour. We could literally hop in place and get pushed an inch or two forward. It was a perfect demonstration of how the wind could have caused these rocks to get formed like this; it could have stripped paint.

We snapped pictures with the other tourists for 15 minutes, rather difficult when we couldn’t even hold the camera straight. The waves crashed angrily at the base of the dome, reminding us of the certain death below. I felt like I was a million miles from home. “Exhilarating” is the word.

After 20 minutes, with our faces frozen in place and our ears falling off, we ran back to the bus. Then it was time for our fourth stop of the day: Cape du Couedic, at the very southwestern tip of the island, where we’d find a natural formation called Admiral’s Arch.

Our driver noted as we drove past the scenic lighthouse that whereas Remarkable Rocks had a little sea breeze, Cape du Couedic had a “stiff wind.” Hoo boy.

Sure enough, gusts upwards of 60 km per hour greeted us as we walked down THIS boardwalk toward the ocean. You coulda told me it was 500 kph and I woulda believed you. The seas roiled like there was a hurricane afoot and crashed violently against the shores and the smaller island just across the way. Waves wrapped around what should have been a protected cove, so we were getting sea spray from all sides. While facing into the wind to take pictures, I literally had trouble breathing.

The boardwalk led down and behind the rocks. Below us, we spotted a colony of about 50 New Zealand fur seals lounging on the rocks and soaking up the sun. The water below them was churned so much, it looked like a latté being made.

As we followed the boardwalk back around, we saw what we had just unwittingly walked over: Admiral’s Arch, a tremendous span with odd stalactite-looking formations hanging down. I hadn’t been that impressed by the arch when I’d seen pictures, mostly cause they fail to convey how big it is, or how angry the sea is behind it. The wind that buffeted us above shot through the arch like a wind tunnel. Seriously. They could have tested jet fighters there.

We shot as many pictures as possible, hoping that some of them would capture the craziness all around us, until our faces and ears were again frozen. Then raced back to the bus, exhilarated all over again.

That was very much a high point of our trip. We drove back to the Flinder’s Chase visitor center for gift-buying. Our final stop of the afternoon couldn’t help but be a let-down, but was still fun: Island Pure Sheep Dairy, where we saw sheep being milked and tasted some dee-licious cheese and honey yoghurt. (They spell it with an H down here.)

The sun set beautifully behind us as the bus took us back to Penneshaw around 6:30. Mary Beth made seven-layer dip and marinated chicken, and we watched Mythbusters on TV (a distinct improvement over the normal options of news, kiddie shows, or rugby) and an awesome show called “The Chaser: War on Everything” which is kind of Colbert Report meets Trigger Happy TV.

We ran into the backyard with candles (no flashlights available) when I heard funny bird-type sounds emanating from the back yard. Penguins? Finally? We isolated the squawking to a certain bush, but the candles didn’t show us who the guilty party was. Oh well.

That was it for the day. Our windswept selves landed in bed.