Kangaroo Island Day 1: The Pirates of Pinniped

Blargh. A lot of stuff happened and it was a great trip but I'm just sooooo exhausted. So here are pictures and not a whole lot of exposition; I'm really sorry about that.

So I woke up at 6 in the morning to move out of my room and leave with a tour for Kangaroo Island. It was pretty awesome immediately because the tour guide was an ecotourism major at Flinders and so we could say a lot of scientific words about animals to each other. Also, we had the same taste in music. Also, he was cute.

Anyway, everyone else was really friendly and nice as well. We drove about an hour and a half to the ferry, and after a forty-five minute ride (during which we saw colourful Common Dolphins) we arrived at Kangaroo Island. We stopped for a picnic lunch and then walked to this beautiful beach that happened to be infested with sharks and so we couldn't swim. Boo.

Afterwards we went to Seal Bay, which houses a huge number of endangered Australian Sea Lions. It was the end of pupping season and there were lots and lots of babies waddling around. There is a mom with her flipper over her pup on the left side of this picture. Awww. Also, we saw males fighting and one actually flipped another over. Oooh. We got to walk along the beach with a guide and get pretty close to them.



After Seal Bay we went to our accommodation for the night. It was an old farmhouse close to Vivonne Bay. This is the view. In the evening, the field filled up with tons of kangaroos.




After the sun set we went to the beach to see the little penguins come ashore. Now, I know what you are thinking: how many times can I go see little penguins come ashore on this trip? The answer is: twice. We saw them coming up and shown a red light on them. The red light was supposed to not scare them, but nevertheless they became startled and tried running back to the water. One tripped and fell headfirst into a gap in the rocks. Only his little bum and his feet were sticking up, and they were wiggling and wiggling but he couldn't get out. Our guide had to run down to the beach and pull him out by his feet. It was quite the adventure. On our way back we saw that the kangaroos had been replaced by small Tammar wallabies; the fields were literally hopping with them.

At this point it was getting pretty late, and most of the group went to bed. I went out onto the porch with two other girls, and we were talking and having tea when this round furry blob came up onto the porch and waddled right past us to the grill. It was a brush-tailed possum, and it was BIG. It immediately stuck its head in a pot and started licking off the grease, eventually upturning it and becoming stuck. The possum was smarter than the penguin, however, and actually found its way out. It was not deterred and continued going through all of our things, completely unafraid of us. Eventually it waddled off into the night and we went to bed.





I am exhausted, and I am going to Tasmania tomorrow, but I promise that I'll finish writing about the trip as soon as I can! Hopefully this will be tomorrow evening.