POSTCARDS from KANGAROO ISLANDS: The Special with Keith Conlon
From Munich to Modbury, Kangaroo Island is regarded as one of Australia's best nature holiday destinations. Now, a new 'highway' takes more people and cars there, and faster.
About 160,000 people visit the island each year descending upon a mere 4000 or so Islanders. The very fact that there is no land bridge... no highway... means the new Sealion 2000 ferry takes you to a different world.
It is a big island, about 155 km long. And about one third of it is National Park or Conversation Park. Its ancient rugged coastline is another ingredient in the alternatively soft and cuddly animal images and wild and wild spectacular scenery shots that promote Kangaroo Island in the South Australian Tourism Commission's international campaigns.
K I, as its known locally, is a place without the environmental scourge of rabbits and foxes. No mass tourism resorts either. And that's because it's across Backstairs Passage, an ocean filled trench 17 across cut through the tail end of the Mt Lofty Ranges by an ancient glacier, a couple of Ice Ages back.
The new Sealion 2000 ocean going ferry spans that gap between Cape Jervis and the holiday town Penneshaw on the eastern part of Kangaroo Island. It is the main transport link for the islanders, their industries, and their visitors.
All sleek, stream lined and smoked glass, the Sealion 2000 was custom built for the voyage, and the local syndicate asked for airline style comfort for its 350 passengers. Not a flight attendant in sight, but the on board café crew will serve you a real cappuccino!
You may find yourself sitting with pensioners from suburban Adelaide, or professionals from swish Antwerp. About a quarter of K I's tourists are from outside Australia, coming for a 'mini Australia' package.
Many of them catch the tour bus to the other end of the Island and Cape de Couedic. If you're collecting Postcards on Kangaroo Island, of remote southern coast beach has to be on your tour plan - Seal Bay Conservation Park is about an hour's drive from Kingscote and it's home to several hundred Australian sealions. There is a wheelchair and pusher friendly access to the dunes and a view of the beach on the 400m boardwalk. A new booklet tells you it's also built to protect the pups and female seals coming inland.
Getting on the beach to be with the sealion colony is a privilege. You'll join people from the seven seas with a Ranger for a tour of the colony. Apart from the occasional playful surfer-pup, they look, well, lazy…but there's a very good reason for that. They spend three or four days far out to sea feeding - and this is were they rest up.
This is among a mere handful of accessible seal colonies anywhere in the world….why are they here? They think it's the protection of the dunes and the pups can practice swimming inside the reef. But it's still nature in the raw. Only 1 in 3 of these sealions live to maturity…. they're a feed for the Great White Sharks, so there's a lot more to life at Seal Bay than a day on the beach.
Now to some smaller, but still amazing seafarers who beach at Penneshaw. Kangaroo Island's Penguins
Among the newer charms of the rolling Kangaroo Island landscape are fresh green vineyards like the one sloping down to the Bay of Shoals just out of Kingscote. There are now six wineries on KI and you can check the labels and sip them by the glass at Roger's Café & Deli in Kingscote.
The Island definitely spells food and wine these days. The Ligurian bee story goes back 120 years. Now they're the only pure strain of these gentle Italian bees left in the world and there's a honey farm open to the public. Marron are imports from Western Australian creeks - hefty cousins of our yabbies, they're grown at Gum Creek Marron Farm, (where you can tuck into them on the spot) and in dozens of creeks and dams.
And eggs and poulty! KI is free of foxes, so the chooks range free and you can taste the difference. Then there's the cheese! Award winning Camembert and Brie comes from one dairy.
Next we call on the southern side of the Island again for a climb down to an underground wonderland that was only discovered when a horse fell down a hole. The Kelly Caves Conservation Park.
On Kangaroo Island more than half of the population live in Kingscote on the north coast and they're fiercely proud of their place in the history of SA. The first chapter of the story was written here - 6 months before the Buffalo turned up at Holdfast Bay, 8 ships before it came here to Reeves Point (or Snake Point as the sailors before them called it).
The memorial marks the real beginning of the colony - 27/7/1836. As it happens Colonel Light found that water supplies would be a problem and so the pioneer settlement's original site languished, but a mulberry tree planted by the stayers in 1837 is still going strong.
Kingscote as it is now known would have been named "Angas" if the Chairman of the South Australian Company in London hadn't refused the honour, so a board member Henry Kingscote scored it instead. Why the Queenscliffe Hotel then? When the town shifted a couple of kilometres from the pioneer's site, it was officially called Queenscliffe instead. But Kingscote won the day. And now its jetty and the landmark Ozone Hotel are another often collected Postcard shots and if you're staying awhile on the island, getting out on the water can pay dividends!
Just join Ian King for a day fishing on Kings Fishing Charter.
From Cape de Couedic at one extreme to a giant sandhill close to the other end - Mt Thisby. It's a Santos building of a climb - 518..519..520 steps and worth every one! Almost 200 years ago, young Captain Matthew Flinders and his offsider Mr Brown were pleasantly shocked by the sight of the Southern Ocean - so close. Off to the East, that's
Dudley Peninsula and on the far end of it, Matthew Flinders did see Cape Willoughby.The Sturt Lighthouse was SA's first and has been warning off mariners since 1852, below it the Cape Willoughby café entices landlubbers to savour fine KI fare and exhilarating views. Back on top of Prospect Hill as Flinders called it, the view's pretty flash too. He could see Mt Lofty from here and down below the tidal flats teeming with birdlife. He called the area Pelican Lagoon.
And a little further on the pretty holiday town, American River, its wharf and oyster lease and charter business and its holiday accommodation and walks have an unusual sense of scrub and sea all at once…for more than 30 years before official settlement of SA, sealers and whalers lived beside these protected waters. Enough of them came from the United States to win the naming rights. American River.
But now let's head inland on a 4-WD nature expedition with KI Adventure Charters.
Of course, no trip to this natural paradise would be complete without spending time at the giant National Park at its western end - Flinders Chase.
Kangaroo Island pleads for time. Its pleasures are better explored and enjoyed over a few days. We travelled end to end to collect our Postcards from KI and we will go back on the Sealion 2000. It's a colourful daily caller to pretty Penneshaw harbour - and it's seen some very historic traffic.
In March 1802, British navigator, Mathew Flinders sheltered from a gale in the waters off here. His crew came ashore and killed 31 kangaroos for much needed fresh meat. In gratitude, he called his landfall, Kangaroo Island. He also named the Backstairs Passage to the long gulfs of South Australia.
A couple of weeks later, French explorer Nicholas Baudin came past, just after the famous encounter of the two ships of warning nations that gave Encounter Bay its name.
Baudin was back next summer, after retiring to Port Jackson for the winter, naming the southern coastal features. Having circled round to the northern side, his crew came ashore at Penneshaw for water and carved 'Frenchman's Rock'. It is now safe in the new Gateway Visitor Centre.
South Australia was officially colonised in 1836. As Flinders and Baudin's charts came into whalers and sealers hands, however, there were temporary 'residents' long before that. Commander Isaac Pendleton brought his American ship 'The Union' into these waters in 1803, and his crew built a 40 ton boat on the shores of what's now called American River.
Penneshaw is sometimes called Hog Bay. It is thought Baudin may have released pigs for future sailors. But I prefer the old timer's version quoted in a nineteenth century history. He said 'the pigs got a shore in a werry mysterious way, do you mind'.
There's nothing mysterious anymore about why this isle is on the must see list for many of Australia's International visitors. It is a very special place to collect Postcards - Kangaroo Island.
For more information on Kangaroo Island, visit the Kangaroo Island section of the Postcards web site. www.postcards.sa.com.au/kisland.html
And for more details on how to visit the Island, visit the Sealink site at www.sealink.com.au
If you need any other information please email us here at Postcards, info@postcards.sa.com.au
