Flinders Chase Visitor Centre And the Platypus Waterholes Walk on Rocky River: In the Kangaroo Island region of South Australia
It’s no secret that the daily ferry across Backstairs Passage changed the game on Kangaroo Island. Since the mid-1980’s, visitors have poured through the hamlet port of Penneshaw and with a smooth road all the way now, many immediately cruise for the easy hour and a half that takes them to the other end of the island - and one of KI’s huge attractions.
Taking over the entire western end, Flinders Chase is a giant National Park, and you know you’re getting close to the facilities when you emerge from the thick bushland to see the bright green grass of Black Swamp and its resident Cape Barren Geese. There have been some dramatic changes here in the last year or so, with an award winning new Visitor Centre offering a colourful introduction to the park. In the interpretive section an eye-catching mural portrays life size diprotodons - giant wombats about the size of a cow- along with some fearsome looking marsupial lions and other megafauna of a long gone era.
As a Flinders University archeology project is proving, the “complete set” lived here, and a tour of their extensive dig close by in the swamp will eventually be part of the experience here. A Brisbane couple used a touch screen to find more about the plants they’d seen flowering in the scrub, white young Devon from New Zealand was patting and testing the textures of several animal skins for the hands-on table. We agreed one of them was definitely a brush-tailed possum.
“We saw some last night!” he boasted.
Visitors from all over the world are enthusiastic about the centre. Through vivid and large-scale illustrations by local artists, it gets us tuned to enjoy the small things in the vastness of it all…. like the creatures that inhabit just one “apartment block” here (we would see it as a coastal mallee or yakka). It’s like playing Where’s Wally the Western Whipbird on a grand scale.
The coats of the Kangaroo Island Kangaroos have gone a distinctive chocolate over eons. Having seen them lazing under the bushes that camouflage the carpark outside, we learn here they’re changed in their isolation and that’s a broad theme here. This is all a big change for visitors too, and a long way from the origins of Flinders Chase.
As Ranger Dan Grieve explained, “It didn’t happen overnight. It took a long battle over twenty years for people like Samuel Dixon who insisted that something had to be done to protect the natural environment. Even in the nineteenth century, species were rapidly disappearing from the landscape, and that’s why the original idea of Flinders Chase as a sanctuary was born. Koalas, platypus, Cape Barren geese and more were brought here. If they were gone on the mainland, at least they would be protected here.”
It is all 5 star self-serve take-your-time information in the new centre, housed in a striking building that features curving walls of the limestone of the Southern Ocean cliffs, and the earthy colours of the high Flinders Chase plateau on the other side. There are friendly faces to greet you and get you started as well.
“That will keep you busy for half a day and preferably half a week,” chuckled Ann at the National Park counter that is just inside the doors. A German retired couple departed happily with maps and guidance, young backpackers sorted out their camping permits and a family from Adelaide paid their park fees and gained some tips about how long they’d need to spend at Cape de Couedic. The response from those who’ve already been down to the coast is “as long as you can”.
The café with real lunches and good coffee is a very welcome addition to the end of the island, too, and the books and gifts section is well patronized by the KI-in-a-day bus trippers who otherwise lack a quality souvenir opportunity. The outdoor eating area is a short bone’s throw from the Fossil Pit - a clever sand play area where would-be archeologists sharpen their fossil finding skills by unearthing casts of skeletal sections of the megafauna buried near by in the bog.
The family friendly feel of the new centre extends to the adventures waiting outside. Even the name “Platypus Waterhole Walk” whets the appetite, and to make it even more attractive, it is flat, easygoing and the return trip is less than five kilometres. But don’t expect to do it quickly, as it delivers you to seven different platforms overlooking pools along the pristine Rocky River. You will want to linger with the sounds of the bush around you in the “whisper zone”, a friendly way of saying if you are keen to wait and possibly sight a platypus, best do it quietly.
We certainly needed plenty of time, blessed with the company of platypus pundit, ranger Robert Ellis. Pausing at a beguiling life-size bronze sculpture of a female with two young that greets venturers as they approach the river loop, he told us, “She can collect them up on to her tummy with her wide tail.”
This is your guaranteed sighting…a lovely sculpture by Silvio Apponyi, the sculptor laureate of native animals in South Australia.
Rob’s research suspects are very shy, but the “maybe” is well and truly covered by the chance to get to previously secret river pools and all that lives in and around them. He pointed across one long stretch of tannin-coloured still water.
“On the left, under that pretty spread of overhanging coral fern, there are active burrows.”
Back in the Visitor Centre, we’d seen vision of the dozens of platypus that Robert and his observer team have counted, tagged and tracked over two years. He knows the Rocky River deep pools very well by now.
“This is a beautiful place”, he mused as we tread softly to a hide above an oval pool surrounded by lush fern, melaleuca and tea tree. “That’s why we decided to put a hide here out of respect for the sensitivity of the whole place.”
I asked him how far does a platypus roam from such an idyllic home.
“We did some tracking here,” he responded. “The average range is up to three kilometres, but one male was moving up to five from here.” Keeping up with him through dense tea tree and paper bark scrub was no picnic. Now, however, the paths between riverside observation areas make our quest much easier. And at Deep Pool, we almost scored a sighting.
“Yep there’s definitely movement there!” I whispered excitedly, as tell tale ripples and bubbles indicated a platypus was feeding close to us. It was, however, a perfect example of the rangers’ philosophy this time. It’s the journey rather than the destination that counts. Here, beside a wilderness river, there is a birdcall and frog croak symphony of serenity that will bring out the poet in you.
And, as you sight another life-size male bronze sculpture by Silvio on the edge of the bush, you too can definitely come home to brag, “I saw a platypus.”
Flinders Chase Visitor Information Centre
Rocky River
Flinders Chase National Park
Kangaroo IslandOpen 9am-5pm daily (except Christmas Day)
Phone (08) 8859 9235
