Granite Island and Victor Harbor: In the Fleurieu Peninsula Region of South Australia
For about 110 years, the horse tram has trundled holiday makers across the causeway to Granite Island at Victor Harbor, but just lately passengers are pleasantly surprised at the changes for the better - especially for the little penguins who call it home.
You will see the first sign of Granite Island’s new look as you hit terra firma again. The “entrance statement” polished granite boulders emphasise that this is a special place, with the aboriginal word “Kaiki” carved into the face, and a new life size group of penguins captured in bronze by Silvio Apponyi (his whale tail fountain is already a defining image on the mainland).
Just up the raised walkway leading to the path that circumnavigates the massive outcrop, our Granite Island Nature Park tour guide, Amy Pysden, points out that we are off the ground so the penguins can pass underneath on their daily to and fro.
“What we are standing on is a flyover for people, so that we don’t interfere with the penguin burrows that are right under us and further up into the rock crevices”, she explained, going on to demystify the boulder hopping antics of two torch carrying volunteers down towards the protected cove below.
“Sally and Sonya are trying to find signs of active burrows, or even spot penguin parents who are staying home today. We call them PDO’s - penguin days off.”
Leaving the annual penguin census behind, we noticed the Kaiki Trail is now spiced with interpretive signs, one of which graphically depicts a molten upswelling of baserock that has produced magnificent meetings of weathered granite and Southern Ocean swells. “Kaiki” means “reed spear” in the language of the Ngarrindjeri nation, and their Dreaming tells of legendary warrior Ngurunderi throwing his spear after his two fleeing wives and creating the island. The guides read an approved story about Umbrella Rock, one of the island’s most photographed features in which Ngurunderi throws another spear and his club, creating Wright Island and the Bluff to the west.
The South Australian Company was making its mark here in the first months of the new British outpost, starting a whaling station at the foot of the Bluff. A privateer whaling master, Captain Blenkinsop, was but weeks behind them and he cheekily set up his operation on Granite Island near the first horsetram bend.
The mighty Southern Ocean side was the scene for a dangerous competition between the whaling crews whenever a Southern Right Whale was sighted.
Neither station was very successful, but Granite Island has become a popular lookout once again during the winter whale migration season. Whale watchers pour across the causeway, which was originally extended to the island for commercial shipping purposes. Later the government sank a fortune into the screwpile jetty to take the towering clipper ships on the London run. Their export cargo came from the ill-fated Murray riverboat trade via rail from Goolwa. The 300 metre granite breakwater protruding east into Encounter Bay was constructed to protect the anchorage from ocean breakers.
On Granite Island Discovery Tours, Amy and her colleagues try to convey just what a mammoth task it was back in 1880 to shift that huge ribbon of granite. 192,000 tonnes of rock was chiseled and blasted, rolled on an extending railway and dropped into the sea. Four men died building a port that was never to fulfill its ambition of rivaling Port Adelaide. The cargo tramline was commandeered to serve the next great wave, however. In the 1890’s, a summer migration of holidaymakers poured off the Adelaide to Victor train and onto the new double-decker horse tram.
The island tram terminus brings us back to the little penguins - and an area which has dramatically changed to their advantage.
“We tried to plant some vegetation that helps protect them in the quarry gully, and the new miniature sand dunes between the restaurant and the breakwater are designed to give them a natural zone between their burrows and the sea,” Amy noted.
“We’ve installed the raised boardwalk to give the penguins free passage between the breakwater and their burrows among the granite boulders under the cliff. This is one of their main daily routes to and from the ocean, and they’re now enjoying the chance to take their time unhindered.”
Nightly two hour penguin tours now include this boardwalk and close-up traffic is guaranteed with 160 burrows carefully installed nearby by volunteers. For these island residents, the smallest of the penguin family, this has become prime waterfront real estate.
During the day, the terminus tourism facility is the first port of call. Now much more than a kiosk, it is run by the lessees of the island, The Granite Island Nature Park Company. They work closely with the state’s National Parks and Wildlife Service and Ngarrindjeri elders. The contemporary building perched above the protected bay behind the breakwater is the information centre for the new look Granite Island, its Penguin Centre, the floating Oceanarium (reached via a short boat trip), and guided tours for schools, groups and individuals.
The bistro overlooking the bay where seals and dolphin call beckons, and so it is a much richer experience now than its traditional image suggests, but you can still indulge in a simple, old fashioned pleasure…licking an ice cream from the kiosk and watching the waves break into sprays of white foam on the giant boulders of Granite Island.
Details:
Granite Island Nature Park
Victor Harbor
South Australia 5211Ph (08) 8852 7555
Email info@graniteisland.com.au
For research assistance, thanks to Katie Birbeck, Cultural Tourism Degree student, Flinders University
