KANGAROO ISLAND, Australia, Part 2: Hanson Bay, Seal Bay and Kingscote

Hanson Bay Beach, Kangaroo Island, Australia

Why do people go to Kangaroo Island? For the beaches and outdoor sports, for wildlife viewing and for the delicious locally grown fresh food.
Our fourth day on Kangaroo Island began with a visit to the Hanson Bay Wildlife Sanctuary to book a guided spotlight tour for that evening. (Most Australian wildlife is nocturnal and best seen at night or at dawn and dusk.) We then proceeded to the turnoff for the dirt road to Hanson Bay, a pristine and beautiful beach that is also the beginning of a walking trail to the Kelly Hill Caves. Almost no one else was there–as was true for other beaches we had visited on Kangaroo Island. I couldn’t pass up the chance to put my feet in the Southern Ocean and found the water pleasantly refreshing–not nearly as cold as the Pacific Ocean on California beaches at home.

The trail at Hanson Beach overlooks the nesting grounds of hooded terns; visitors are cautioned to walk along the wet sand during the nesting season

The sand dunes on the far side of the bay are covered with hardy low growing plants adapted to the wind and arid conditions and where hooded terns build their nests.

Koala joey exploring on its own

That evening, after an early dinner on the veranda of the Wilderness Retreat, our lodging for three nights, we returned to the Wildlife Sanctuary for our nighttime tour. The sun was just setting and the animals were stirring. Dozens of koalas could be seen in the branches of the huge eucalyptus trees planted along the main avenue. We watched a young koala joey scramble down from his mother’s branch and practice climbing on its own. Then we had to jump aside to avoid two adults in a wild chase as one headed for his escape up a nearby tree. Never have I seen koalas move so fast.

The echidna or spiny anteater is one of two egg laying mammals; a baby echidna is called a puggle

As the day grew dark we moved into the fenced area to look for kangaroos, wallabies, possums and echidnas who live inside this huge area safe from foxes and other predators.

Tammar wallaby

When we spotted an animal, the guide and her assistant highlighted it with flashlights. As long as we didn’t get too close, the animals paid little attention to us. At the end of the evening we returned to our hotel under a Southern sky brilliant with stars and unfamiliar constellations.
In the morning we checked out of our hotel and headed back to the east end of the island, stopping again at the Hanson Bay Café to buy a supply of Kangaroo Island honey to take home as souvenirs. The honey, made from eucalyptus flowers, has a unique taste.(Elsewhere on the island one can visit the honey farm.)

Australian sea lions at Seal Bay

Our main stop of the day was at Seal Bay to see the endangered Australian sea lions. Hundreds line the beach. Walkways and platforms allow people to observe the sea lions. We took a guided tour onto the beach but still had to stay a safe distance away from the huge animals, which can move surprisingly quickly on their flippers across the sand.

Kingscote

From Seal Bay we drove to Kingscote, the largest town on Kangaroo Island (population 1,763). It is both the tourist center, with a variety of art galleries, shops, and restaurants along its main street, as well as being the island’s municipal center.

Cormorants roosting for the night at Baudin Beach

From there we continued to our B and B at Baudin Beach near Penneshaw, ending the day with a walk along the path on the bank above the beach. In the morning, we were scheduled for an early trip on the ferry. Our five days on Kangaroo Island had been full and relaxing. It was the perfect kind of vacation!

HOW DO I KNOW I'M IN AUSTRALIA?

Koala joey at Hanson Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, Kangaroo Island, Australia

I love going to Australia. Since my first trip in 1983, I have been back five times, including my recent trip in December. Here are some of the things that tell me I have arrived in the land Down Under.

Clocks are five hours earlier and I have lost a day! (In the southern hemisphere winter, the time difference between California and Sydney is seven hours.) The trip across the Pacific crosses the International Date Line. On the way home, we gain a day.

Summer flowers at the Coriole winery in McLaren Vale, South Australia

The seasons are switched. When we arrive in December it is summer Down Under. Flowers are blooming and the temperature is warm.
At noon our shadows point south. While the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west, it arcs to the north in the southern hemisphere.

Late afternoon, looking east toward Remarkable Rocks on Kangaroo Island

At night the stars are upside down. Orion is standing on his head and there is no North Star. Instead, the Southern Cross points to the southern pole star.
Traffic is on the left and drivers sit on the right.  Each time I step off the curb I have to remind myself to look to the right for oncoming traffic.

It helps to be reminded to drive on the left in areas popular with tourists

Kangaroo crossing signs. Yellow signs warning drivers to watch out for wildlife (kangaroos, koalas, wombats and more) are common along highways.

Koala, kangaroo, Cape Barren goose and echidna signs--Kangaroo Island

In our rental car our luggage goes in the boot (trunk) and we fill the gas tank with petrol (gas). Although the language in Australia is English, it is full of British terms that take getting used to, not to mention expressions that are uniquely Australian (such as "putting a shrimp on the barbie.")
Everything is metric–road signs are in kilometers, petrol and milk sold in liters, and meat at the supermarket is in kilograms.
No pennies. It took me a while to remember that when getting change from a purchase, there are no pennies. Although items are sold for 99 cents and other odd amounts, the total is rounded off to the nearest five cents. Pennies were abolished a number of years ago. Over time, the difference evens out.
Electricity is 220. The electric kettle in our hotel room boils water almost instantly. And, all electric outlets have an on/off switch and need an adapter to use the American plugs on our phones, computers, etc.
The first floor of our hotel is actually the second floor, while what we consider the first floor in the U.S. is the ground floor. To get to our room on the 37th floor we take the lift (elevator).

View from our balcony at the Meriton Suites Hotel, Sydney, Australia

No tipping. Restaurant workers are paid good wages and, unlike in the U.S., tipping is not expected. If one does tip, it is typically a small amount.

Our delicious rhubarb meringue dessert at Coriole Winery Restaurant

And as everyone cheerfully says in response to any concern--
No worries!

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA: Queensland Museum, Koalas, and More

Botanical Garden, Brisbane, Australia

(April, 1999. Excerpt from my Melbourne diary, written during our three month stay in Australia.)

Last night we returned from another activity packed trip, this time to Brisbane and Lamington National Park in southern Queensland.  In the central business district of Brisbane (or the CBD as they call it) one finds turn of the century churches and other historical buildings as well as high-rise office buildings.  The main shopping section, on Queen Street, has been turned into a walking mall with outdoor restaurants, entertainers, etc.  Our hotel, which opened in January, was a few blocks from the shopping area and was built in about 1910 as medical offices.  A few years ago the building changed hands and was restored to its original splendor (including a creaky lift) and all the doctor’s suites were turned into hotel rooms.  One wonders what medical specialty our room once represented!

The Brisbane river winds its way through the city and on the south bank there is a park and arts complex.  I walked across the bridge from the city center and visited the Queensland Museum which had a number of interesting exhibits including one on the role of women in pioneer days (how they washed and cooked and stored food with no electricity or refrigeration and how the party line telephone kept people connected even when they lived long distances apart.) 

Megalania skeleton (photo by Richard Hewett in my book Dinosaurs Down Under)

At the museum there were also numerous dinosaur skeletons and fossils of other extinct animals such as the giant lizard, Megalania.  There was a realistic life-size animated model of Megalania with a warning that small children shouldn’t look if they were easily frightened.  (It also had realistic sound-effects.)  Megalania was a MUCH larger relative of the modern Komodo dragon and I must say that when I turned the corner to view the exhibit, I jumped.  Unlike dinosaurs, this real life monster was roaming Australia at the same time as the early Aborigines and would have been a fearsome animal to encounter. The Megalania exhibit reminded me of a book I wrote called Dinosaurs Down Under: Fossils from Australia (out of print but available online or at your library).
 
In another part of the museum there was an exhibit of a device invented by an early state meteorologist, a man by the name of Clement Lindley Wragge.  Although his device, a kind of giant cannon intended to seed rainclouds, never worked, Wragge is famous for being the first person to give names to cyclones (hurricanes.)  According to the label on the exhibit, he named them after politicians of the day on the grounds that they were both national disasters!

One morning I drove to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, an animal park on the river about a half-hour from the city center.  This was a nostalgic trip for me because that was where I had researched one of my first animal books, Koala.  Although the ownership of the park has changed and most of the staff are new since I was there in 1985, they welcomed me and gave me a nice tour.  It is still one of the few places in Australia where visitors can “cuddle a koala” and, of course, have their pictures taken.  I was lucky to have beautiful, warm weather and spent most of the day watching the animals, including the wild turkeys and lizards that roam the grounds and are a bit of a nuisance.  I also found a mother wallaby and her joey who was cautiously exploring outside the pouch.

Note:  This was actually my third visit to Lone Pine.  The first time was in 1983 on my first trip to Australia when I visited with my family. You don't have to go to Australia to see the Lone Pine koalas. They now live at zoos in San Francisco, San Diego, and elsewhere.  The story in my book Koala follows a young koala born at Lone Pine who eventually makes her home at the San Francisco Zoo.

(To be continued next week with our trip to Lamington National Park.

Phillip Island, Australia: Koalas, Kangaroos and a Penguin Parade

Woolamai Peninsula, Phillip Island

Excerpt from my diary of our three month trip to Australia in 1999.  Our trip to Phillip Island was in late February.
On Sunday we took a day trip to Phillip Island, which is about two hours south of Melbourne.  It is mostly agricultural, but people have summer cottages there and it is also a good place to see wildlife.  By the time we arrived it was lunchtime, so we bought some food and took it to the beach on the Woolamai Peninsula for a picnic.  The long sandy beach faces the Bass Strait (the body of water that separates Tasmania from Australia) and we watched the huge waves come crashing in and the surfers trying to catch them. 

Mother and baby koala take a nap

In the afternoon we visited a Koala sanctuary, where you can see koalas both in their natural state (where they look like furry lumps high in the treetops) and up close in a special enclosure.  We also went to a wildlife park where you can walk among the kangaroos, emus, deer, and other animals.  When you buy your ticket they give you a bag of food for the animals, so if you hold your hand out, the animals will come and eat.  Some of them are more aggressive than others, and one emu actually pulled the bag of food out of my pocket when I didn’t offer it anything to eat.

A young grey kangaroo waits for a snack

We had an early supper at a supposed Tex-Mex restaurant (it lost something in the translation) and then made our way to the Penguin Parade, Phillip Island’s most famous wildlife feature.  Every evening at dusk, hundreds of fairy penguins come in from a day at sea, waddle up the beach and into their burrows in the sand dunes.  During nesting season, which is just ending now, the plump chicks wait at the entrance of the burrow for their parents to come back with dinner.

Waiting for the penguins to come ashore

Fairy penguins are the smallest of all penguins and stand about a foot high and are quite charming, especially the superfat ones which have put on extra weight to give them energy while they stay ashore for several weeks and molt.  The unfortunate thing about the Penguin Parade is that it has been over commercialized and they let too many people in to watch.  More than two thousand tourists sit on bleachers and wait for the penguins and then rush around trying to see them next the boardwalk when they come in.  Rather amazingly, and luckily, the penguins don’t seem fazed by all the human activity.  We had a nice, relatively warm evening, perfect for penguin watching and sunset at the beach, but I suspect that when the weather is less hospitable, far fewer people are willing to sit out in the cold and the birds are less bothered.

Fairy penguins return to their nests after a day at sea.