Day 6 - Aussie 2011

Wow, another perfect day in Australia!

We woke up all snuggled in our sleeping bags and although we’d both woken up a few times during the night I have to say I prefer camping over sleeping in hostels. It’s nice to have our own private space and be able to snuggle together rather than sleep on bunk beds! Plus, I got a nice backrub from Nick in the morning which was a great way to start my perfect day.

We had to laugh about our night sleeping on Kangaroo Island. We both heard some sort of rustling against our tent, which probably would have scared me if we were sleeping in the Sierra Nevadas or the Rocky Mountains but here on Kangaroo Island, I knew it was either a possum, wallaby, or kangaroo probably wondering how to get to the food in our tent. Later in the night, something poked at Nick’s feet at the end of the tent, haha! Maybe you guys think that’s scary but we thought it was funny.

We got up pretty early, around 6:30am, and went for a walk along the beach just beyond our campsite at Vivonne Bay. I had wanted to watch the sunrise there but it had been raining when my alarm went off and I was pretty groggy. Still, the sun was low in the sky and I took some beautiful pictures along the beach. The rain came and went throughout the morning and created yet another vivid rainbow. By the time we came back to the campsite, it had become a triple rainbow, haha! It just went through the colors once and then repeated the blue and purple again and again. We thought that was pretty neat.

After we packed up camp, which consisted of us throwing the tent in the backseat, pads and sleeping bags still inside, we headed West toward Flinders Chase National Park at the other end of the island. On the way there, we saw a field with a bunch of kangaroos lounging around in it, which field was a part of the Hanson Wildlife Sanctuary. I got excited about the kangaroos and had Nick pull over so I could get some pictures. They were too far away but I saw one closer to the fence down the road so we got back in the car and drove a bit further so I could get closer. 

I got out and was surprised to encounter a kangaroo on my side of the fence! Wow, it was right by me, only about 15 feet away! Now these are different kangaroos than what you may be thinking. These are not the big red ones but are a little bit shorter, thicker, and fuzzier. Not to say that they are not still big and I was careful to keep my distance but I was not as cautious as I would have been with the big red kangaroos. Anyway, Nick got my picture near the kangaroo, who eventually bounded off, and I got my picture of the original kangaroo inside in the fence. It was a special and unexpected surprise for me.

So we made it to Flinders National Park and paid our entry and camping fees. The gift shop there was really cool so I shopped a while there. They had some original prints of aboriginal artwork and I really enjoyed the colors used. I was also enamored by another artist, Jeremy Boot, who had done some really amazing paintings of Australian birds. I couldn’t stop looking at them so I bought a few small prints. We also bought a cool kangaroo figurine.

From there we drove down to the nearby coast to a place called the Remarkable Rocks, one of the highlights on the island. This place exceeded my expectations by a long shot, which was cool. I love surprises! The Remarkable Rocks are these very large – some of them probably 25 feet tall – red rocks with very strange formations. I suppose they look like large lumps of clay that someone just squished up with giant hands, with big smooth divots here and there. And the whole set of rocks sits on top of a huge rock dome overlooking the ocean. It was a very other-worldly setting and we took quite a bit of time taking pictures and video there.

This guy asked us to take his picture and then he took ours at the Remarkable Rocks. He cracked me up because he counted before he took the picture but he counted really slow, like we needed lots of time to get ready. “One…. Two…. Three.” Phew, okay, I think we made it! Good thing we had all that time to prepare!

Anyway, we left the Remarkable Rocks and hit yet another much-cooler-than-expected place just down the road. This place, Cape Du Couedic, had a big lighthouse overlooking the cliffs. We took a walk along the cliffs and spotted quite a few seals playing in the waters below and lounging around on the rocks, much more than we saw at Seal Bay! We continued on in our walk to another cliff, called Weirs Cove where an old dock can be seen down below, and then returned to the lighthouse. 

What I liked most about the walk, beside the view of the ocean (and knowing it is crawling with Great White Sharks), was the butterflies. There were small white butterflies everywhere and they would flutter up from the bushes as we walked past so we ended up always walking through tens of butterflies at any one time, like something out of a fairy tale!

From the lighthouse, there was a very neat boardwalk going down the hillside to a place called Admirals Arch. Wow, this was an awesome walk! First of all, the green of the brush mixed with the gray of the rocks was a really neat blend. Second, the ocean was magnificent! You could see so much of the horizon and the water was so blue. Third, there was another large island just beyond the coast that made for an incredible background, and another smaller island just beyond that! Fourth, the arch itself, which was a sea cave with a great many black stalactites, was very picturesque with the ocean seen beyond it. And lastly, there were seals all over the place!!!

I couldn’t believe the abundance of seals! Everywhere you looked you would see them lounging on the rocks and we wondered aloud how they managed to get to some of them. What was especially neat were the natural pools formed among the rocks where seals were playing with one another, chasing and barking and biting. In the ocean were a few other seals whom you could see riding the waves and loving life! It was like a seal resort and spa, all with a stunning ocean view with tumultuous waves crashing all around. Wow, I couldn’t get enough!

Oh, and if it wasn’t cool enough, there was a little baby seal that we followed the whole time we were there! When we first got down to the seals, we saw him up close, looking up at us from below the boardwalk! Well, the cute little guy, that we named “Buddy,” went hopping up and down all over the Seal Resort and Spa looking for his mom! It was kind of sad actually because he would stop at a sleeping seal, consider for a moment, then approach like he was going to try and get some milk, and then the seal would bark at him and he would run away and keep looking and sometimes stop and cry out. It was such a big place that he really had a lot of ground to cover to look for him mom and we followed his journey all the way through – me with my camera taking pictures and video – but we never saw him find his mom, the poor guy! He eventually stopped and Nick think maybe he had found her but I think he just got worn out. So it was kind of sad but made for good video and he was so cute waddling all over the place!

So we left that area of the Remarkable Rocks and Cape Du Couedic and went back up to the visitor center to go on the Platypus Waterholes walk. This turned out to be quite an experience! The vegetation was really unique. It looked like a zoo set-up because it was so perfectly wild. Oh, and speaking of wild, the sounds were so wild too! We heard so many different bird calls and insect sounds – very loud ones – and other noises that we weren’t sure of. I wanted to take footage just for the sounds!

And there were animal sitings every couple of steps! There are these funny geese here. They are pretty, with gray and black feathers and lime green beaks. What is really unique about them is there sound. Sometimes they sound like regular geese but they make this other sound that sounds like a frog croaking. I thought it was so funny, especially how they would go back and forth with it. One of them would croak and another one would croak in reply somewhere else. They are very responsive to one another and also very paired. Where there was one, there was another keeping close and I even got a pair mating on video, haha! I have to say I have never seen a female bird actually let the male do his deed but it was interesting and kind of funny since they did a little victory dance afterward, ha!

Oh but there weren’t just geese. No there were heaps – as they say here in Australia – of kangaroos and wallabies! Every few minutes we would either see some in the bushes or have one cross the path in front of us. It was unreal and got laughable after a while considering how many we saw! “Oh, look, another one.” They would stop and look at us and go back to their eating and hop away when we got closer. They kind of remind me of raptors with their little arms and the way they look when they hop. They are very interesting creatures!

So we had all this adventure on the walk but when we got to the waterholes we didn’t see anything. I had been told to go at dawn or dusk so there we were with the sun getting low but all we saw were a few bubbles plopping up from time to time. We sat still and tried to be quiet since platypus scare easy but it was a no go. I wasn’t surprised, really, since they are pretty hard to spot in the wild. Still, I enjoyed the quiet moments and the continual call of the birds going on the in the meantime.

We hustled back and were dazzled by a jaw-dropping sunset. The sky looked like lava! Although I had wanted to get back to our campsite before dark to set up the tent, I lingered a bit to try and capture the bright orange sky. It was a neat moment, and especially fitting since we began the day with the sun rising on the beach! This time, instead of sand and waves, we were surrounded by geese and wallabies!

I was excited to camp because I knew the campsite was pretty good, with showers and everything, and that there were few people booked so it would be quiet. I also knew that the site we had booked was the best one in the camp! So I was pretty irritated when we drove up and there was someone in our spot! What!? I got out of the car to ask about it but no one was around. We were not sure what to do. There was no one official to ask about it but if we waited for the people to show up it could be pretty late and it was already nearly dark. But if we took another spot then we could be taking someone else’s too! 

Well, we decided to go ahead and take the next one. We got everything set up pretty quick and later, when I heard the people come to the site, I confronted them about it. I wanted answers! The lady said, “Oh, so sorry, we just got here and the place was pretty much empty so we camped here instead of the site we booked.” Wow, well, that was a pretty big assumption that you weren’t taking someone’s spot just because you didn’t see other campers when you came in. Maybe you could have checked with someone at the office before you did that!? So, I thought that was pretty lame of them but it’s not like I was going to make a big stink about it when we both had our tents set up. It just annoyed me.

We got into our tents, pretty tried obviously, though it was only around 7:30pm, and had to laugh at the all the noises we continued to hear. Those geese were all around our site and would sometimes make their croaking sounds all together and it would make us laugh. Then we heard something, who knows what, messing with our car probably smelling the food inside or just curious, who knows. And there were other noises from who knows what. It was just so completely wild but I loved it and thought it was cool. Talk about a getaway!

Despite the noises, I slept soundly through the night.

Pictures:

Our little campsite at Vivonne Bay.  Nick hung the rain fly up to dry and then it rained, haha!

Nick heads down to the beach at Vivonne Bay with the sun rising.

I got Nick wandering the beach.  He was looking for shells.

There was pink seaweed all over the beach, some darker and some very bright!

I could get rich off all the cuttlebones on that beach!  Here I am with cuttlebone bunny ears!

Nick took this shot and I think that it is awesome!  I love the clouds, the rising sun, and the reflection on the beach!

Oh look, another rainbow going all the way across the sky!

Here is the kangaroo I ran across on my side of the fence!

I got this picture with the wild kangaroo.  He was scratching himself, which they do often.

An aboriginal painting that I thought was cool, hanging in the Flinders Chase National Park visitor center.

I am headed to the Remarkable Rocks!  Little did I know how cool it would be!

Nick hoisted me up there!  I wanted to go higher but it was too steep in places.

Nick under a Remarkable Rock overlooking the ocean.

Look!  It's Remarkable Rock Boy!

Yet another awesome rock formation.  They are all so big!  I love the clouds in the background.  The weather was very nice.

There were so many rocks to climb on.  I wanted to get a picture of every one of them!

There is this naturally formed seat in the rocks and I decided to sit on it.  I look like I need to be worshipped!

Here is the picture we got taken by the guy there.  One... two... three!  Do we look ready?

The lighthouse at Cape Du Couedic!  It was pretty cool, built in 1909.

A look at the seals lounging about on the rocks down below, as seen from our hike along the cliffs.

Here I am hiking along the cliffs!

A look back at Cape Du Couedic from our hike.  You can see the other island on the end there and the lighthouse in the distance.

Here you can look down and see seals lying around on the big rocks down on the beach.

This is taken from our walk down to Admirals Arch.  The same beach with the seals is down there as seen in the picture before.

It's our little friend, Buddy, who hopefully found his mom in the end!

The Seal Resort and Spa at Admirals Arch!

The would swim or lounge.

Here we are at the arch itself!

A lady took our picture at Admirals Arch.

The croaking geese!

One of the many kangaroo we ran into on our platypus walk.

Yet another kangaroo.

The only platypus we saw, a statue.

And we end with the amazing sunset!