Kangaroo Island

   


 

Atop Mount Lofty with KI in the distance



 





We flew from Canberra to Adelaide which is along the south coast of the country.    The city is small and pretty and much of the architecture is a cross between Victorian and cottage vernacular.   

Adelaide architecture



The city was overtaken by bikers for the Tour Down Under so we headed out of town to the Adelaide Hills.  The country drives were spectacular and we went strawberry picking and found a local cheese maker who let us sample the herby goat and sheep cheeses.  Lunch of fresh strawberries and cheese—perfect.     

Pick one eat two





From the peak of Mount Lofty we could see the whole coast, including the beautiful shoreline of Kangaroo Island.  On Tuesday we went back to the airport for the 20 minute flight to the Island.  The island is about 30 times the size of Nantucket but has only 4000 year-round human residents.  Marsupials, however, are all over the island.  Kangaroos and wallabies live off the inland grasses and koalas devour the eucalyptus groves.  Eucalyptus is also a native to Australia and comes in hundreds of menthol-scented, flowering varieties.  Koalas are very particular about their leaves they eat which the only thing they consume:  no water or protein.   We spotted several of the koalas munching away, seemingly oblivious to our presence.  This was really neat but nothing came close to the experience we had playing with the orphaned baby kangaroos. 

 

Roo-B is as soft and sweet as she looks



Most people here consider the kangaroos and wallabies pests, eating their crops and denting their cars in the all-too-frequent car versus roo encounters. 

We seriously considered adopting one of our own until we witnessed the power of their legs when they play fight! 



Small hands, big feet

The rugged coast of the island was spotted with rock formations (called the Remarkables).   

Mike, crossing a chasm of The Remarkables




 After a few days on Kangaroo Island, we felt ready to leave the country life and head to Melbourne the next stage of our adventure:  living in the big city and getting back to school. 

Blue Mountains and Canberra

There is nothing unclear about how Australian sites are named.  Some have Aboriginal names, which usually have symbolic meanings, and others are literal descriptions.  The Blue Mountains are truly blue:  the eucalyptus forests create a haze over the striking hills and gorges.



The two sisters in front of the Three Sisters formation in the Blue Mountains



Cockatoos swarming our yard

We stayed in a charming town about 2 hours outside Sydney.  Our house was a civilized Victorian cottage with a tile veranda separating the perfectly civilized house from the wild jungle of a garden. Outrageously colored parrots flew around the yard, and cockatoos perched on the power lines much to our delight. 

We could picture the turn-of-the century Colonials trying to tame the Bush.  One of the thrills was a scenic railway (called the Scenic Railway) that took us down the mountain at a frightening 52 degree angle –a thrill-park ride down an old coal mining track.  The parrots and kukaburras calling through the rainforest made it sound like a Tarzan movie set.



Jill looks so natural holding the parrot





Jill fulfilling a life-long dream:  glassblowing



We drove from the Blue Mountains to Canberra, the capital of the country.  At the turn of the century when Australia became an independent nation, they had to pick a capital and Canberra was chosen as a compromise halfway between Sydney and Melbourne.  It is a planned city designed by an American architect (Chicagoan Walter Burley Griffin) and much like D.C. is filled with great museums and showy embassies.  We toured the Australian Museum (see what we mean about the names?) where we learned more about the early settlers and the treatment of Aborigine people.  We took a break from museums to continue to fulfill our new years' promise and try something new: glass-blowing. 

 

Just outside the wide boulevards, however is rough country.  We were invited to dinner at a friend of a friend’s home in just outside of town in the bush.  We spotted the alpacas in the yard as we drove up the dirt road. 

Audrey with the alpacas

By the end of the evening, we had seen all the fauna of the region except the poisonous snakes which our friend assured us were closeby.  The ant mounds looked like shepherd's huts across the way and the sunning lizard we stumbled across looked like a baby croc.  We felt like kids at an open-air wildlife park--which is what Australian bush is.  

We were too awe-struck to take picture when the  "mob" of kangaroos hopped across the road in front of us.