102 – Getting to Kangaroo Island

Kangaroo Island, or Kaurna (‘island of the dead in the native Pama-Nyungan language of the Kartan people) is Australia’s third largest island. It is off the coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia, southwest of Adelaide.
About 10,000 years ago, rising sea levels broke the island off from the mainland and the Kartan people dissolved into history. The island did its own thing for a while until the early 19th century when sealers and whalers stopped by. The first permanent settlement was in 1836 when the British started colonizing South Australia.

The island is 145 km long from east-west and between .94 and 54 km from narrowest to widest points.
It is an island, so a lot of coast line. 540 km worth. The whole island is 4,405 km2 and at the highest point is 307 meters.

There, now you can check geography lesson off your to do list for the day.

So, why come here? For the honey.

You thought I was going to say kangaroos. Ha. I will in a minute, but I wanted to keep you guessing.

Ligurian Honey Bees are here. The island has the world’s only pure-bread and disease-free population of Ligurian Honey Bees, So they have an industry of exporting the queen bees. And they gather the honey and sell it. That is big too, but I did not know exporting queen bees was a thing.

My ignorance overfloweth, but ya’ll already knew that.

It was also the reason I could not bring my bee keeping equipment, bee related items or anything that might harm the bees to the island.

I had to repack. Not.

Other than that, they have a southern rock lobster fishery, agriculture in general, and of course, a lot of natural areas that have brought the tourists. Perhaps the best known and most visited is Flinders Chase National Park on the western end of the island, but there are a lot of things to see all around the island.

So we flew into Adelaide and rented a car for the drive to the coast and the ferry.
On the way down the coast we stopped at O’Sullivan beach and climbed around on the rocks for a while. Yes, I took pictures.

Then we drove to Cape Jarvis, where we attempted to buy groceries and gas because we were warned in advance groceries and gas were not plentiful on the island.

We found gas, and yes, there were groceries, or an aisle of survival items and a cooler with drinks. And odd sculptures made out of old cutlery. We decided to take our chances on the island for food, but we did get lunch… which was edible.
We were entertained by the sweetest clerk who I put between 18 and 25 in my head, but she had all the scoop on the latest Instagram rivalries. We also learned where she lived, who her neighbor was and how you could pick out his house because he was the guy who did the cutlery sculptures and had bigger ones in his yard. We also learned her boyfriend worked on the boat, and if we saw him, we should say hi.
I felt like I was back in Iowa.
After that, we thought about heading back toward Adelaide to see if we could find a more substantial grocery store, but in the end, just got in line for the ferry.

The Sealink company’s ‘Sealion 2000,’ ferry is the ship we were booked on, which is good because we had a rental car and their other ship, ‘the spirit of kangaroo island’ often travels with ‘freight’ which includes livestock. I don’t think the rental company would appreciate hoof dents in their car.

The ferry travels across the Investigator Strait several times per day – obviously to move people, goods and apparently livestock to and from the island. We did schedule on short notice, but we were lucky to get tickets because they are a very popular service.

If you were wondering, as I was, why it is called ‘Investigator Strait, the answer is that Matthew Flinders named it after his ship, the HMS Investigator on his voyage in 1801.
The ferry was very nice, but given my experiences on this trip, the Cook straight between the North and South Islands of New Zealand is a calm puddle compared to the windy high seas of the Investigator Straight. I do not know if it is typical for the strait to be this active and windy, but the lesson from the whale watching cruse bore true. Sit down, hold on and don’t get blown overboard.

When we did arrive on the island, the first thing we did was find a grocery store. And there was an ample grocery store in Penneshaw, the town where the boat dropped us off.
Not a Costco, or super Target, but a good size ‘local’ grocery that had everything we needed. So we stalked up on random things and headed toward our accommodations for our stay.
Kristin found a cabin near Stokes Bay, which was a bit of a drive from Penneshaw, but nothing on an island this small is too far. It was, however getting toward dusk and on an island like this, you do not want to be driving after dark because the wildlife is plentiful. They may not win a battle with a car, but they will leave a scar, so it is always better to avoid the car scar when possible.

We got to our cabin and were greeted… did I mention it is called Kangaroo Island? This would be why.

We of course, dropped our bags and returned to the deck to socialize with our welcoming committee. The manager of the property is a sheep farmer, and the kangaroos lived here before the sheep did, so he lets them hang out. They are wild, but friendly for the most part, and they hang out to clean up the food he throws out for the sheep.
So yes, we did feed the ‘sheep,’ and I took a lot of pictures of the… bouncing sheep.

As the sun set, I talked to the owner and asked what the night sky was like here. He said give it a bit, and then you could see the Milkyway with the naked eye.
I did not doubt him, but I doubted him. So I snapped some pics of the sunset, and waited. Yes, this was the view from our cabin. not bad.

Except it was windy. I said it was windy on the ferry to the island, and it was. Here it was worse.
I had the perfect night sky to photograph. I had my sturdy tripod, my remote to click the shutter. Everything was perfectly in place to set the tripod up and just click the night away.
Except it was windy and try as I might, I could not protect the camera from the wind shaking it about. I could not protect myself from being blown about. There were times later in the evening when I was certain the windows in the cabin were going to blow in, but somehow they did not.
I was running through tornado protocols in my head so I would be ready if I needed to dive for cover at some point in the night. I did not need to. Felt like I should be in the basement and hearing sirens, but alas, it was simply… ‘windy.’
So, I will say I got pictures of the night sky. I will say they even look like the night sky. I will not say they are good pictures, because they are blurry due to the wind. I intend to try again tomorrow night, hopefully without the wind.

But they are what they are, and in the moment, at least I got something.
Overall, it was a great introduction to Kangaroo Island. Good company, great nature, and relaxing views. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.