We may be up against a bit of rain in the next few days here on KI. But today was looking pretty good – so we did a bit of a swap of activities. This morning, we headed out to Little Sahara!
Little Sahara is an adventure centre based at some incredible sand dunes on the south side of Kangaroo Island. They run quite a few different tours around the dunes and the huge heritage listed property – but we were going there for some sand tobogganing! We’d found this place on a list of family things to do on Kangaroo Island. The other tours and bike riding and other things they ran did look fun, but we knew we’d all have a great time sliding down the sand dunes in a little wooden toboggan. And we did.
We arrived at about 10am and picked up our helmets and a couple of toboggans for us all to share. (And waivered our lives and those of our children away as well, of course.) The walk from the centre over to the dunes isn’t too far – but then you remember you’re walking in quite soft sand, and it gets exhausting quickly!
We made it to the first dune we wanted to slide down after a bit of a walk. The only downside to this whole activity is that, of course, if you want to slide down the dune on your toboggan, you have to walk up the sand dune. We had a bunch of fun sliding down the dune for a good 45 mins or so – taking individual turns and going as pairs. It turns out it’s not actually super easy – trying to steer the toboggan is a bit of an art, and my first couple of attempts were highly unsuccessful, and I ate a lot of sand.
Once we all got the hang of it, we had some great runs and plenty of laughs.
Everyone was getting a bit keen to head over to the big dune in the distance – Joel, one of the guides at the main centre, said there was a much bigger dune a bit over, but he did warn us it was a bit of a walk. When we looked over at it, we actually thought it wasn’t too far and it’d be great! Joel was right – it was a long walk. But we made it over there with a good 30 to 40 mins left of tobogganing.
We thought climbing up the medium dune to ride it was tough – this one was ridiculous. Such a huge climb to the top, but the speed you got coming down was just brilliant! We all ended up only having a couple of goes at the big dune – we were just exhausted trying to walk up each time and carry the toboggan! And as time was drawing to a near, we started the long walk back across the dunes to the main centre.
We got back to the main centre and they had a few tables and chairs there, so we decided to just have our lunch sitting there. While we were having lunch, the big 6-seater dune buggy they use for their tours was sitting beside us. And before too long, Debbie and I were both thinking the same thing – yeah, it costs a bit, but we’re probably only going to be here once, and those sand dunes were amazing; imagine what’s out further. Thankfully, it was a really quiet day for them with no other tours booked, so they were happy to take us on a tour. We finished up lunch, got our helmets and goggles on, and headed off.
The tour was brilliant! Not only just amazing fun zipping around a huge property in a buggy, but we learnt and saw so much as well. Our first stop was in fairly thick bush, only a little way on. We immediately found some koalas living in the trees and Joel ran us through some information about them – I didn’t realise, they actually essentially had too many Koalas living here before the Black Summer fires; they’d started desexing them to try and control the population! The gum trees just couldn’t keep up and they were just getting stripped bare.
We headed on further through the really bushy area of the property that sits to the side of those huge sand dunes, seeing a bunch more koalas, also running into a hive of Ligurian bees – KI is known for being the purest and oldest Ligurian bee sanctuary in the world. (We can’t wait to hopefully find out more about these guys tomorrow.)
But after all that, it was time for the fun – winding our way back to the centre across the sand dunes. A few windy sections through some shrubs, but then also some wide open dunes where we really got up some speed. Also a couple of huge drops off the top of some dunes as well!
It was such a fun day, and amazing experiences! I talked with Joel after and asked him about the fine line between preserving the dunes and the animals that live there, but then also wanting people to enjoy and experience them. He said it’s something they work a lot on – being a heritage listed area, there’s the obvious rules they need to always adhere to; but even just things like not varying tracks on the buggies, so that you’re only going through the same area each time – those things help to respect the land and the animals, but also still allow people to enjoy the beauty.
By this stage, it was still only early afternoon really. So we stayed down the southern end of KI and headed for Vivonne Bay. On a tip from back at Little Sahara, we stopped in at the Vivonne Bay General Store to pick up some hot chips, and then headed out to the jetty and rock pool area at Point Ellen – the main point at one end of Vivonne Bay. The rock pools around there are just beautiful – such clear water, and huge pools. But really close to the waves, so we did have to be really cautious about how big the waves were getting. We didn’t end up spotting any creatures in the rock pools, but the kids did have a great time looking around and climbing the rocks.
After that though, the kids were begging to go down to Vivonne Bay beach. It was about 18º and windy, but they were adamant. We headed back around to the main beach, and got them into their swimmers. I was so sure they’d put their feet in and be done 15 seconds later – I was so wrong. We spent nearly an hour there. The beach really is their happy place – they definitely get that from Debbie. For most of the time, we were the only people on this huge stretch of beach.
The rain held off today. It was supposed to arrive mid-late afternoon – essentially while we were at the beach. But it held off until much later this evening! Not only great for our activities and adventures, but also for the load of washing that was drying on the line.
Tomorrow’s activities might need to be a bit more flexible if the rain does persist – but we have some good ideas ahead!
