We’ve arrived on the beautiful Kangaroo Island for a few days! The people of the Ramindjeri, Ngarrindjeri, Kaurna and Barngalla nations knew this island as Karta Pintingga. It’s believed they inhabited this island some 16,000 years ago, before rising sea levels cut the island off from the mainland. We pay our respects to the elders of the Ramindjeri, Ngarrindjeri, Kaurna and Barngalla people, especially acknowledging their ancestors.
We headed off from Victor Harbor about 8am this morning, needing to get down to Cape Jervis for the Kangaroo Island Ferry. When we crossed Port Phillip Bay a couple of weeks ago, the car ferry felt pretty relaxed – we all drove on and parked in a pretty relaxed fashion, and Debbie and the kids stayed in the car as we drove on, and then we all walked up together. Crossing to Kangaroo Island was a lot more controlled! I was the only one in the car as we drove on, and the parking was super tight – 4 people directing the cars, and everyone parked within a 100mm of each other. The ride across was… rough. It was really windy, and the sea was pretty choppy. I’m not hugely sensitive to being seasick, but I wasn’t overly keen on all the up and down. I shifted to the back of the boat and just listened to a podcast – Alexander joined me after a little while saying he wasn’t feeling great. The crossing is only 45 mins, so thankfully we were both fine.
We’re staying in Kingscote on KI – but given the ferry lands in Penneshaw, we thought we’d do a few of the walks around there. We started with the Kangaroo Island Sculpture Trail – a beautiful loop around a ravine just across from Penneshaw Beach. The kids had a great time spotting each of the sculptures, as well as a series of haikus that were hiding around the walk as well.
After some lunch in a park nearby, we headed for another walk a bit further down the road, called the Wallaby Track. It was a much less defined track, one that was made by a local a while back. It followed a creek through a fairly light bush, past a couple of interesting sculptures. Eventually, the track hit a fence – and we were left a bit confused about where the track went. Not really wanting to cross the fence, we followed it for a little bit trying to re-find the track, but it never really surfaced again – so not really wanting to walk further than we could find our way back, that’s where the walk ended and we turned around and headed back out. We ended up thinking that perhaps the fence was reasonably recently put in, and that’s cut off the last 300m or so. When we were trying to find the end of the track though, we did finally run into a kangaroo, which was a bit exciting for the kids!
We jumped in the car and drove over to Kingscote. Until you get here, I don’t think you quite realise how big Kangaroo Island is – the drive from Penneshaw to Kingscote is 45 minutes. And we’re barely a third of the way across the island!
We’re in a really nice cottage just behind the shops in Kingscote. Tomorrow was going to be a relaxed day of exploring Kingscote – but with the weather potentially looking like rain from Friday onwards, tomorrow might become our fun outdoor day…
