KI Day 2, Part 2

 The views on the way down to Admirals Arch were stunning.  There were seals playing on the rocks and the sky was a beautiful blue!  Our group leader told us about a time when he had been down on the rocks (when you were permitted) when a freak wave washed onto the rocks.  Luckily, he managed to slip into a cave and hang on.  All the seals were washed from the rocks and the whole scene was watched by his wife and in-laws who thought he'd been swept out to sea!


After Admirals Arch, we headed for a swim. The sea looked beautiful but was a little chilly so I decided to paddle at this beach.  The water was really clear but quite seaweady at the shore. There were some snorkelers out to sea with spears and they came up to the beach with heaps of fish that they'd caught.

KI Day 2

 After a warm night in a local school, sleeping in bunkbeads, we headed off exploring.  The first thing we came across was a wild koala, sitting at the bottom of a tree right next to a car park.  He was just sitting and staring at all the onlookers and eventually decided we were being   too noisy and headed on up the tree.   We headed down the coast towards Remarkable Rocks and we could have been in Cornwall.  It was very cloudy but incredibly warm - about 28 degrees.  The views were all just like the Cornish coastal ones except there were far less people.

 Once we got to Remarkable Rocks, we explored, taking heed of the notices warning us not to go over certain parts of them.  There'd be no chance of me risking life and limb for a better view!   Once again, the views reminded me of the Cornish coast.

 

The rocks were huge, too huge for me to climb most of them but some people had great fun climbing and jumping off.

 The views were amazing and it was really interesting to discover that KI was the place the Cook first discovered and he mistakenly thought it was the mainland.  KI is the second largest island off the coast of Australia.

KI Day 1, Part 3

 As you can see, we visited the KI wildlife sanctuary where all the animals are rescue animals.  It is illeagal in South Australia to release rescued animals back into the wild.  We even saw a koala high up in one of the treet - possibly a wild one who had chosen to make his home at the sanctuary,

 There were lots of animals to get upclose and personal with.  Some of the kangaroos were a little over friendly with one another which seems to be a bit of a theme here!

  
 

As you can see, the animals were very friendly and the baby joey was sooo cute!

KI Day 1, Part 2

 We then went off to a honey farm and learnt lots about bees and their behaviour.  Apparently, it was bees' behaviour that alerted scientists to the Chernobyl disaster!  Not liking honey myself, I was rather pleased to find one that was very tasty, I decided that I would try to have a spoonful a day. 

 It was really interesting watching the bees at work - we even found the queen!

We also visited a cheese farm and tasted the most delicious cheese, my favourite being holumi dry fried with a little lemon juice - yum!

KI - Day 1 - morning

 The schedule on KI that had been arranged for us by SAETL was tight.  We visited a eucalyptus oil farm in the morning and met an interesting character with controversial views on farming.

 In the shop at the eucalyptus farm they had some great little gum nut babies (I made some of these with my class at Christmas). There was also a possum in a little bag hanging on the wall.

We had lunch at Kingscote, where afterwards, we saw a pelican (the white dot in the centre of the picture on the right).

We then saw hundreds of cockatoos flying from tree to tree, making the most enormous racket - an awesome sight!  I did try to follow them to get a picture but, as usual, was too slow.

Kangaroo Island

The journey to Kangaroo Island started at silly o'clock.  I was picked up at around 4:45am as we had to be at Cape Jervis (about 2.5 hours from Adelaide) for the 8am ferry.  The journey down there was amazing; we saw a beautiful sunrise and kangaroos in the wild.  I was warned about the ferry being rough but found that it was fine.  It takes about an hour to get across to KI. 

When we got there, we were introduced to our mode of transport for the weekend - a yellow school bus!  The island is usually about 5 degrees cooler than Adelaide which we were quite grateful for as there was no air con on board.

Sunsets and rises

More beautiful sunsets and a stunning sunrise which looks as though there's a massive fire in the background.  The sunrise pictures were taking whilst moving so are not the best quality, although the colours can be seen clearly.