Hopping around on Kangaroo Island

The last stop of my whistle-stop visit to Australia was Kangaroo Island - around 3 hours by coach and ferry from Adelaide. Much of the island is natural landscape and national parkland, so there is loads of interesting wildlife to see, as well as amazing scenery particularly along the rugged coast.

I stayed in the little town of Pennenshaw, where the ferry comes in. My exploration took me all around the island. Our first stop was Seal Bay, where there is a colony of Australian Sealions (not seals at all). It was great to walk along the beach, keeping at least 15metres from the sealions, and watch them at rest and play - the younger sealions quite enjoy surfing too, although they are generally pretty lazy on the beach!

After lunch, we stopped off to see some Australian birds of prey and this is a photo of me and my new friend Abby, the Barking Owl. The man in charge (and in the picture) is Dave Irwin, nephew of famous Aussie Adventurer Steve Irwin. We also saw falcons, eagles and kookaburras.

From there, we travelled to the Flinders Chase National Park, which suffered dramatic damage during an 8-day bush fire back in December. Much of the natural bush was destroyed, although we could see the re-growth starting already.
We went first to the Remarkables - a rock formation on the southern side of the island. I think this rock looks like Professor Yaffle from Bagpuss. Remarkable is just about the right word.






From there, we travelled on to Admiral's Arch, another spectacular rock formation and also home to a colony of fur seals - these guys are a lot more active than the sealions and love to play.

On our way back, we spied lots of the kangaroos for which the island is named, hopping across the bush. There was also an amazing sunset and a spectacular moon rise too - sorry, not able to capture those on camera, but they were incredible sights.

My last visit on Kangaroo Island was to the penguin colony, to see the little penguins as they returned home. Hopefully, you can make out the penguin in the photo - shooting without flash and very high film speed.

So that was Australia, next stop LA, before returning to the UK next Monday.