Australia 2020 – Kangaroo Island

Few had heard of Kangaroo Island until the media reported the devastation caused by the bush fires which raged for weeks after Christmas. The fires destroyed 40% of the island’s vegetation, including the Flinders Chase National Park, a visitors’ centre, hotel and caravan park. Two resident males were killed trying to escape the fires by car, and thousands of animals perished, including kangaroos, koalas and sheep, plus insects and snakes.

Checking the situation before we left, we were advised that our tour could go ahead, as the remaining 60% of land offered good opportunities to learn more about the area. We took the opportunity, therefore, to hop over to Kangaroo Island and we were pleased we did.

We spent two days touring with our excellent guide Lio and four other travelling companions. During the first day we didn’t see any destruction, focusing on the east and central parts of the island.

We visited the beautiful and sandy Seal Bay where we watched mother seals looking after their young. The beach was not crowded with seals which enabled us to concentrate on just a few of these cute mammals.

Then it was on to koala I-spy. These little ones are hard to spot, staying up trees for most of their lives and sleeping 20 hours a day, but some actually sat and watched down on us which provided a few photo opportunities.

Koalas eat only eucalyptus leaves. There are many varieties on the island, but the koalas consume only five species with the lowest oil content. The leaves are poisonous to their system and it takes them huge energy and several days to digest. Hence their slow nature.

The fires have destroyed much of their habitat and subsequent food sources. This is causing issues for those involved in their care. Koalas would rather starve than eat the wrong species of eucalyptus. Consequently there are efforts to collect leaves from the trees in the east of the island to provide feed for remaining koalas in the fire-damaged areas.

The island also has high sand dunes, at Vivonne Bay in the south, which we climbed. Upon every step our feet sank into the fine hot sand, which made for a good workout.

On our second day we headed towards the destructed west side of the island. This 40% of the land mass is out of bounds for visitors currently due to safety reasons; even the roads have been destroyed, their tarmac melting in the heat. However, we were able to view the outskirts, with their burnt or bulldozed trees – emergency efforts to create fire breaks.

It was incredible seeing the charred remains close up. Within two months of the fires raging new growth is emerging from the trunks.

Our final visit was to a wildlife park where the staff are caring for animals injured or orphaned in the fire. Attempts are being made to put these back into their natural environment, but the orphans which had to be hand raised (and bottle fed every four hours) will not know how to fend for themselves in the wild so will need to remain in captivity.

At this venue we were able to go into the large enclosures of the kangaroos and wallabies, watching the little joeys run into their mother’s pouches. The pouches are nothing like the horizontal slits across the mother’s belly as shown in cartoon drawings. Instead they comprise a hole in the tummy surface which opens easily like a pair of elasticated curtains through which the very leggy joey speedily clambers in, swiftly turning around to pop its head out and view the outside world.

The kangaroos have four teats. The two lower ones feed the newborn ‘jellybeans’ (just five weeks gestation and looking like jellybeans) with full cream milk for the first 18 months of their lives. They then escalate to the two upper teats serving semi skimmed milk so that mum can go on to feed the next offspring. If she had six teats no doubt she would be serving cappuccino.

Kangaroo Island certainly has its problems, but for tourists the trip seemed unaffected. The island’s biggest issues currently are that some people have been scared off due to the negative publicity, but it is suffering a double whammy with flights being restricted into the country because of the C-virus.

It proved to be a wonderful and enlightening trip. We are so pleased we still had the opportunity to visit.

Copyright: Words and photos Sue Barnard 2020

PS Apologies for any duplicate postings recently. We rely on the wi-fi systems as we travel along which often throw up technical issues out of our control.