Day 13. Kangaroo Island

Yesterday, my first day on the island, was awesome! Brenda, who has lived on the island her entire life, was our guide. The other tour participants were a couple with their 16 year old son from Columbus, Ohio. (I made my tour arrangements through Exceptional Kangaroo Island, as they offered small group tours as opposed to larger groups of 14 or so people). We started out looking for koala bears. We found one or two here or there who were sleeping high up in trees, curled up in a ball, so they just looked like a big ball of fur. Then, one crossed the road, right in front of us, and climbed up a tree, and turned around to pose for our cameras.....


Cute, huh? Although apparently they can be quite vicious with their claws if they feel too threatened.

This also was where, right across the road, we had our best kangaroo sighting...


Although we expect to see even more kangaroos tomorrow.

We stopped off at an old school house for morning tea...


The towns were so far apart back in the 1800's and travel was difficult and so the towns would build their own school to service the children in their immediate community. The building would also serve as a church, town meeting hall, etc. Inside.....


...they had some of the old "rules" posted, such as: if a woman teacher married, she would have to resign; and male teachers could only court one night per week, two nights if they attended church regularly; after five years of service, they would get a 25 pence monthly raise.

Then, while walking through the bush looking for the almost extinct glossy black cockatoo (which we didn't get to see), we had some daytime sightings of the wallabies (which look like little kangaroos)...


It is thought that there are only about 200 of the glossy black cockatoos left, all on Kangaroo Island. There is only one thing they eat, the seeds in the pods from cassamina (sp?) trees, which are here on the island.

We stopped at a tent that was set up on a sheep farm, where Brenda prepared a wonderful island lunch featuring grilled king george whiting fish and sheep milk cheese.


Our day was capped off with a visit to Seal Bay where there were hundreds of Australian sea lions taking a three day nap on the beach after three days of feeding out at sea. (Mandy, it was very similar to that beach we visited in the Galapagos).



Then back to my b&b, where there were two couples that had arrived; one from Houston and one from Chicago....we ended up just putting our tables all together for dinner.

Today, another day of Island exploration.

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Location:Kangaroo Island, Australia