AMERICAN RIVER, KANGAROO ISLAND

It is not in America, and it is not a river either, but it is a protected, beautiful and historic inlet - American River on Kangaroo Island. I began our Postcards tour with a long climb up the wooden steps to the top of Mt. Thisby, or Prospect Hill as the great British navigator and explorer Matthew Flinders called it when he chugged his way up the giant sandhill in April 1802. He'd wanted an interior view of what he'd just named Kangaroo Island, and instead found The Southern Ocean almost below him. A skinny isthmus lay between the roar of Pennington Bay and the placid shallows of Pelican Lagoon below. It was, and still is, teeming with birdlife.

From the top of the hill you can see an almost unchanged coastline, with the island's shortest river, highest hill, largest bay and narrowest point all at once.

From another drive-up lookout closer to the holiday town and wharf, we could see how a range of hills runs along a deep pocket in Kangaroo Island's north coast, protecting it from harsh hot summer winds and cold winter sou'westers. That would no doubt have influenced the American sealer Captain Isaac Pendleton when he made camp in the lee of the hills way back in 1803, more than thirty years before the first official settlement. At Independence Point, he and his crew of forty or so men spent the winter sealing and building a forty tonne schooner, "Independence".

He sailed to the infant Sydney town with thousands of sealskins and his crew blabbed in the pubs of The Rocks. As a result, they reckon there were five hundred sealers and whalers in these waters within a few years. The Yanks among them gave the top end of the huge Nepean Bay its name.

Overlapping with Flinders, the French explorer Nicholas Baudin named the channel Port Dache. And a port it certainly became, with the old Muston Wharf seeing thousands of tonnes of salt annually boarded onto coastal ketches round the turn of the twentieth century. There was a fourteen-kilometre railway to the salt lake and a thriving township by the water. It's gone, but a few forlorn concrete and wooden piles project into the narrow channel that comes up into Pelican Lagoon.

What's thriving now in American River is tourism. International visitors now look onto the soothing seascape through distinctive shoreline gum trees as they stay at the legendary Linnett's establishment. A century of guesthouse tradition is now re-invented and refurbished into the four star Kangaroo Island Lodge, scrub and sea and a poolside retreat.

Guests enjoy meeting the wallabies that hop into town each evening and taking the early nature walk that runs through the open native scrub that reaches down to the low cliffs and sandy coves of the shoreline. The track leads to the ruins of another long gone industry, the fish canning factory that lasted for just a few years in the late 1800's. Local guide, Jane Renwick will find you her feathered friends in the sheoaks and down in the shallows. We watched oyster catchers, a white-faced heron, and two busy little rock-hoppers that eluded even her expert knowledge.

The people who live in the relaxed hillside settlement at American River will persuade you that you need to experience their paradise from out on the water as well. Boat charters for fishing or just lazy cruising are very popular because these blue-green waters are so protected. The Postcards crew borrowed the KI lodge "tinnie" to take in more of the unique scrub and sea-scape, and we watched the sleek five-star charter yacht "Iluka" breeze by towards the busy town wharf.

There the big cruiser "Cooinda" awaited another charter fishing group, while the big oyster barges came and went. A couple of work teams shuttle to and from the long lines of posts that mark the oyster leases the big barges acting as floating platforms for the continuous sizing and rattling that produces the succulent fresh-from-the briny treats back at The Lodge.

By the wharf, there's always a boat under repair, high and dry in the cove to add atmosphere. Along the sandy beach, an interpretive sign notes that John Buick, the first permanent settler here, built a boat here with his mate Frank Potts (later of Bleasdale Wines at Langhorne Creek fame). The ketch "Kangaroo" sailed between American River and Normanville on the mainland for many years.

Back on the wharf, there are pelican antics a plenty as the minibuses arrive. The kiosk owner feeds them at about 4.30 each afternoon, and they fly in to take an easy supper. Their squabbling and jostling provides some guaranteed wildlife snaps for the Japanese and German visitors who shared our Postcards shoot. The pelicans couldn't care less, but they are flapping about in an old port that has seen plenty of cargo. The first craypots in South Australia were thrown from the fishing boat "Stella" here a century back, and the coastal ketches regularly called here with imports and exports through until the 1970's.

This is a harbour that is quieter now, but it retains a special appeal on what is already a very attractive island. The casuarina scrub comes right down to the sea, it's a protected inlet. For more than a century its guesthouses have invited people to spend time here soaking up its rich heritage and fishing and the opportunity to see nature up close at American River.

Details:
American River Brochure (incl. Accommodation, charters etc) "Where the bush meets the bay" via Kangaroo Island Gateway Information Centre
Phone: (08) 8553-1185 Fax : (08) 8553-1255
email: info@postcards.sa.com.au

Kangaroo Island Lodge
PO Box 285
American River, Kangaroo Island. 5221
Ph: (08) 8553-7053 Fax: (08) 8553-7030
email: info@postcards.sa.com.au