Tag Archives: planning

Escape to from Kangaroo Island

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Saturday 31 August 2024 – Yesterday started off as a fairly standard sort of day for us on our travels, i.e. an alarm set somewhat earlier than we would normally like. But hey, we’re travelling – it’s part of the drudgery fun. The reason for the 0530 alarm was an 0905 flight to Kangaroo Island, where the plan was to spend a couple of days taking in the sights – maybe, I dunno, some kangaroos or something?

The first cracks in this plan became visible when Jane phoned up to confirm our itinerary for the island. When she eventually got through, the nice lady at the far end confirmed all the necessary details, which included our exit from the island, which was to be by ferry; but she added a slightly alarming comment about the possibility that the ferry might be cancelled because of the high winds that were forecast for the morrow. There was not much we could do about that, so we just got ourselves to the airport and on to the plane (a De Havilland turbo prop jobbie) and on to the island, via an aerial view over Glenelg, which we’d visited the day before.

The Kangaroo Island airport is a small affair, dealing daily, as it does, with a single inward flight in from Adelaide and an immediate outbound return flight on the same aeroplane. It took a little time to get our bags, even though it was not a large aeroplane, mainly because the KI process involved taking the outgoing bags out to the plane before they brought the incoming bags in. This slightly eccentric way of going about things was described to us by the chap who met us and was to be our guide for the day, a chap called Franck.

Franck was living proof of nominative determinism, in two respects: firstly, he is French, and those Frenchies used to be called Franks in the days of Charlemagne; secondly, his surname is Vigoroux, and he proved to be a very vigorous spirit, as well as being knowledgeable about the island, its history and its wildlife.

Our time on Kangaroo Island was billed as being “small group with private guide”, and it was sort of like that – there were six of us on Franck’s bus so the group was small in number, but two of the group were not at all small.

Without further ado, this being around 10am, we were off on the day’s tour, with Franck giving some details about the island which were almost accurate:

  • It’s much larger than I had imagined – Australia’s fourth-largest island according to Franck, or third-largest according to Wikipedia (behind Tasmania – as far south as you can go and still be in Australia – and Melville Island – pretty much as far north as you can go). Your call. Anyway, it’s about 150km from left to right and anything up to 50km top to bottom, so the driving distances are non-trivial. It’s just under 4,500 km², and has a population of about 4,900, so it’s not densely populated; about 140,000 tourists visit every year.
  • The aboriginal people who first settled here disappeared some time after it became detached from the mainland due to rising sea levels some 10,000 years ago. Since then, it was settled by sealers and whalers in the early 19th century and was then colonised by the Poms in 1836.
  • The island’s economy is mainly agricultural. It was originally pretty well covered in scrubby bush, but in the 20th century the government encouraged farming and land clearance, providing land and (very) basic accommodation for settlers as an incentive. Sheep and cows were introduced as well as grape vines, olives and Ligurian bees from Italy – the island has the world’s only pure-bred and disease-free population of this type of bee. The exporting of pure-bred queen bees is a notable industry here.
  • Kangaroos are endemic, but there are also wallabies and koalas here, introduced in the 1920s as a conservation initiative for these species.

We passed an example of an early government-provided farm accommodation

and an example of the chaining log that was used basically to drag across the scrubby bush to clear it.

The resulting landscape has many pastures fringed by bush outgrowth;

several of the open areas have animals – most commonly sheep – grazing on them,

and we saw quite a few pleasant vistas in various places across the island.

The first place that Franck took us to was Seal Bay, a conservation area on the south of the island. It’s not strictly accurately named, as the animals there are not seals, but Australian sealions. The visitor centre / retail outlet there has a useful skeleton on display

which clearly shows that the animals have back legs and forelimbs, which differentiate them from “proper” seals. As he drove us there he told us about the life cycle of these animals. The gestation period is 18 months, and females get pregnant again immediately after giving birth; they then look after the pup they gave birth to for 17 months before casting it out to look after itself, and give birth to the next and the cycle repeats; so the females are basically perpetually pregnant. Their main food sources – crabs, lobsters, octopus – are far out, 200km away, and far down, 100 metres or more; so they spend about three days at a time at sea feeding themselves before returning to land to rest for another three days.

The Seal Bay coast has got dunes over which the sealions spread themselves.

Franck cautioned us to ensure that we stayed together as a group and where possible maintained a 10m distance from any of the sealions which happened to be blundering about in the open or on the beach.

There weren’t many of them doing this today; mostly they were sprawled about near a segregated walkway, where we were free to roam and take photos.

There were some nice little vignettes: a mother and her pup;

a troublemaker

who (when not play fighting with others)

wanted to be fed by that mother and who was told to bugger off in no uncertain terms;

and a couple of bull males who were quite a lot larger than any of the other sealions there.

Up the path back to the visitor centre there were several convenient holes in the scrub that dotted the dunes,

which can serve as accommodation for the sealions in the cool nights and as they give birth and raise the pups.

We left Seal Bay and headed towards the middle of the island. After a while, Franck basically stopped driving, drew off the road into a clump of eucalyptus trees and said “there are probably some koalas around here.” He was right.

Frank clearly knew where the most likely spots were for finding koalas. During the rest of the day, we stopped four or five times so that we could get out and look at koalas (in some cases rather windswept – the day was indeed windy; also rather cool).

A couple of the koalas were mothers, cradling babies.

These koalas were often reasonably high up in the trees, but not always.

You can see one on the right-hand side of the picture above; this one was quite low down.

By this stage it was time for lunch. Franck had talked about barbecuing some fish, and I thought he was talking figuratively about a visit to some restaurant or other. But, no; he drove into a field (in order to disembark into which we had first to dip our shoes in disinfectant to ensure we didn’t bring anything in to the farmland on our footwear) and parked up beside a shelter complete with tables, benches and barbeque equipment, set up in woodland beside the fields.

Proving that his tale that he’d once worked as a chef was not idle talk, he then produced and cooked for us a very fine lunch indeed.

Our lunch actually had a very dramatic end,

as a large branch from one of the surrounding trees suddenly fell with an almighty crash on one end of our little gazebo

narrowly missing one of our group and trashing the barbecue at which Franck had been cooking only moments before.

No-one was hurt, but it quite dented the party atmosphere. Franck was philosophical about the whole thing, describing fixing it as his boss’s problem. He was, as I’ve implied, quite a character, full of life, energy and laughs. He’d had a chequered career, including time in the navy, rescuing stranded people from Lebanon, working as a fireman – terrifically important during the 2020 bushfires which consumed about half of the island – and running a hotel among his many roles. As well as lunch, which he’d packed into his bus, he was able to prepare fresh coffee for us later in the day;

his unique style and deep knowledge added a great deal of value to the overall tour.

For the rest of the day we basically just drove around to the places where Franck thought there might be things worth seeing. Kangaroos were, unsurprisingly, quite easy to find and photograph.

and, indeed, could be seen happily grazing among the farm animals around the island.

It was quite interesting watching the way they move around when grazing, using their tails as a third leg.

Kangaroos are plentiful and easy to spot – “just look for a rock with ears” was Franck’s tip – but wallabies are shyer and more difficult to spot. We did see a couple, though

and among the other birdlife, we saw some colourful Rosellas, which are a type of parrot. They don’t hang about, so I was only able to get this quick grab shot of one.

We were quite lucky with the weather. Although it was windy (see later), the rain largely held off. Largely, but not always.

In a way it was a shame we were still in the daylight; one of the sights we passed was “George’s Castle”, a project started by a chap called, erm, George when his missus got fed up with him being around the house when he retired.

At night, apparently, it’s lit by thousands of lights, and must be quite a sight!

It had been a great day – we’d seen a good cross section of the wildlife, including well over a dozen koalas, been entertained by Franck and escaped death by inches. But now it was time to head to our accommodation, the Stranraer Homestead. This features two restored cottages set on a historic working farm, which has some 6,000 sheep. It’s very quirky, but well enough organised. We shared a decent evening meal with a Japanese family who had been spending time on the island, and it was very interesting to compare politics and culture between the two nations; and we got a recommendation for a pilgrimage route we could walk when we visit Japan, which we hope will not be too far in the future.

That was yesterday. By the evening, the cracks in the original fly-out-and-ferry-back plan had widened to the extent that we decided to cut our losses on a second full day on the island and fly back to Adelaide on the single outbound flight on offer next morning. Astonishingly, given the strength of the wind forecast, there were seats available and so we booked them, which meant we immediately, of course, became keen to keep an eye on whether the ferry would be cancelled in order to justify our decision.

And so to today. As we walked over to the main house for breakfast, we were struck by what seemed to be an almost total absence of wind, which naturally made us wonder if we’d done the right thing. Not that it mattered; we’d made the decision and so were on track to get back to Adelaide in time for lunch, thus preserving the integrity of our planned itinerary for the coming days. The plane was due in around 0945, so we could expect to leave just after 1000 and be in a taxi back to the Sofitel at around 11am. The website of SeaLink, the ferry company, gave us to believe this was looking to be the correct decision.

As we sat in the airport, the cracks in our plan widened to become fissures; our incoming plane was more and more delayed, apparently by engineering issues (“they couldn’t find the radio operator”*) and eventually Qantas gave up and changed the plane, which took off about three hours late. By this stage, the trees outside the airport were being blown about in fairly dramatic fashion, and so we (and a few others in the terminal) whizzed up Flightradar to keep an eye on the incoming flight.

As you can see from the track, the pilots attempted a landing, but had to abort it, after which they tried a different angle which also didn’t work, then circled about for a while waiting for things to calm down to attempt another landing. Things didn’t calm down, so they fucked off back to Adelaide. At the same time, we got confirmation of the ferry status

So, there we were, stranded at Kingscote Airport on Kangaroo Island! The next official flight was tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon – too late for our onward travel to Melbourne; and it looked unlikely that we could escape by ferry for a few days, either.

Bugger.

For several minutes I actually had no idea what to do about all this. Should we be thinking about accommodation? Should we try to book on another flight? What about all the follow-on activities in Melbourne that might be affected?

Fortunately, Jane, ever The Organiser, got things moving. We made a couple of phone calls, and the local agencies who were looking after our time in Australia and on KI were very good in responding and being prepared to help out; and a lady called Janet came to give us a lift to a hotel room they’d arranged.

The Aussie Met Office had issued this severe weather warning for the area

but just as we were resigning ourselves to an indefinite stay on the island whilst the wind died down I got a message from Qantas saying they were planning to run the flight later on in the day, at 1850! We decided therefore to stay in the terminal – it would be about four hours until we knew our fate and that would save us from the complexity of trying to organise a ride to and from a local hotel.

Janet contacted the lady who had been running the coffee bar, which had been closed since about 1pm; Virginia

came back in, and, rather than just offer coffees and snacks, actually cooked a meal for those of us who had elected to stay in the terminal – pasta followed by cheese and crackers, beer and wine; an excellent job all round – and Qantas picked up the tab.

It was clear that everyone knew everyone else and so all the necessary arrangements could easily be made rather than having to go through elaborate and formal channels.

We settled down to the meal and to wait to see what happened. And Lo! it came to pass that there was an incoming flight at around 1800! And, wonder of wonders, it landed OK! So we checked in again, and walked through, past the non-operational security scanner, into the departure lounge and eventually on to the plane.

The take-off, it has to be said, was a little lumpy, but otherwise the flight was uneventful and had the same number of landings as take-offs, which is always encouraging. We then had a very weird walk to baggage reclaim – along a shabby external corridor and across a car park into the baggage reclaim area. Our bags appeared reasonably quickly and so we were able to get ourselves out to take a taxi back to the bosom of the Sofitel – where we have a room that is not quite as good as the one we had before. Annoyingly, the curtains have to be drawn manually, and there’s no bath. Shocking!

We’re very glad to be here, and grateful to all the various organisations that were involved in that: Qantas, who, I must say, were very organised (sending a stream of text messages and e-mails about delays and rescheduling, so we were always in the picture); ATS, who own our overall schedule; and Exceptional Kangaroo Island, who came to the airport to make sure that we were being looked after.

So we’re back on schedule, with a departure to Melbourne at midday tomorrow, and various activities, and catching up with friends, whilst we’re there. Do please keep in touch with these pages to see how the ongoing adventure unfolds.

* Yet another Flanders and Swann reference for you

Still there – Masoala Forest Lodge Day 3

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Tuesday 4 June 2024 – The day started the same way that the preceding days had – having rained all night, it rained on us as we headed to breakfast, which, by the way, was taken every day on the “sea deck”, virtually the only clearly visible building to indicate to passing boats that there is actually a lodge here.

The photo above was taken a couple of days before; this morning, the conditions were much less benign, with a cold wind and some rain.  This made the prospect of going out anywhere much less attractive; the original plan A had been for everyone to go for a serene outing on a canoe along a nearby river, and I didn’t much fancy the idea of floating along getting wet, which in any case makes wielding a large, heavy and expensive camera setup inadvisable.

Also, I was getting all behind with writing this blog.

I therefore decided that a morning at leisure, or at least at the laptop, was my plan.  Jane and Tom decided eventually that the canoe thing did appeal, and so made ready to go for the short walk down to the river.  As they were doing that, Jessie came by to tell us that there was a good snake photo opportunity nearby.  She led us through the lodge buildings Out Back (where all the hard work takes place – see later) to this scene.

It was a little difficult to make out what was going on, but it became clear that there were actually two snakes, tree boas, and they were making out.

There’s a snake at the top of the photo, and another one at the bottom. Careful examination revealed its head

and where the action was happening.

Apparently, they would be At It all day, and, while we were careful not to disturb them, they certainly seemed to have their minds on other things.

So whilst I sat in the beach house doing my blogging thing, Jane and Tom departed, in fairly gloomy weather but bright spirits, to their canoe ride.  I will let Jane take up the narrative.

A short forest walk (no wildlife of note to report) brought us to the bank of a river and a largeish dugout canoe – the locals make these dugouts from the buttress-rooted trees in the forest, but this one had been treated with an extra skin of fibreglass to make it slightly more robust and smoother for the softie tourist! The boatman and our guide Pascal shared the paddling fore and aft while Tom, Ursula and I perched on the cushioned seats amidships.

The rain held off until the very end of our trip; the vegetation was lush and dripping from the previous showers, and it was very quiet and peaceful.

Of course the air of peace and tranquility is completely misleading, since what is going on here is a silent and almost motionless fight for survival, as the various trees compete for light, air and water; either by being the tallest, or having the biggest leaves, or growing the longest aerial roots:

I say motionless, but in fact trees here can “walk” – a phenomenon we also saw in Costa Rica; aerial roots are thrown out in the direction of improved conditions, be that more air, light, or water, and the tree is therefore gradually supported further and further in that particular direction.

There are no crocodiles or water living predators; we saw a pair of dimorphous herons

and several of the tiny jewel-like kingfishers.

 

We saw evidence of the presence of the Aye-Aye, a lemur we are very keen to see – they demolish rotting tree trunks to reach the tasty grubs and larvae inside – but no sign of the (nocturnal) beast itself.

Our boatmen managed the river very smoothly, avoiding the many sunken boulders in the rather shallow water

and we were back unscathed and relaxed at the Lodge in time for lunch.

The Masoala Forest Lodge operation is superbly well-run, and yet is a distant outpost of civilisation – Maroantsetra is a 75-minute 40km boat ride away.  Ever since we arrived we were wondering how the team dealt with this remoteness such that everything fitted together to give such excellent service to their guests.  Jessie had told us that there were, all told, some 57 employees, once you take in the kitchen staff, the hotel service staff and the grounds maintenance staff, all marshalled with great efficiency by the administrative team.  Going to look at the tree boas in the morning showed us that there were quite a few buildings behind the scenes, and after lunch Alban offered to show us around. It was really interesting to see how things fitted together so that the guests were properly looked after. We had, for example, wondered where the solar panels were that powered the lodge, and they were part of what was behind the scenes,

and fed into a battery room

where there are a couple of freezers to keep essential supplies. These are used alternately so one can be cleaned whilst the other is in use.

The site also uses another ingenious idea to keep some fruit and vegetables fresh – a charcoal ‘refrigerator’ – the charcoal acts as a dessicant enabling the contents to remain fresh for longer.

For storing other dry goods there’s a building which looks not unlike the horreos we saw in such profusion across Galicia in Spain.

Note the “mushrooms” atop the legs, which serve to keep the rats out (and, yes, they take the steps away at night!).  The roof thatching for these types of buildings is made from traveller palm leaves and lasts about four years before needing to be replaced.

Alongside the laundry and kitchen facilities there’s the bread oven

where the bread is baked fresh every day (and the room can be used to dry wet boots as a welcome side effect). The staff sleep in dormitories

and even the lodge’s two dogs have their own traditionally-built kennels.

All of this infrastructure sits behind the beach house, which is where the guests eat lunch and dinner, and, importantly, find the bar.

All of these facilities came together for today’s dinner, which was a traditional Malagasy meal.

The tablecloth is made of traveller palm leaves, and diners also have a spoon made by doing origami with palm leaves.  The final table was well loaded with food.

In the foreground, you can see a pile of rice.  There were four piles of rice to be shared between the 10 diners, but Jessie pointed out that actually each pile of rice would be what a single Malagasy person would eat in a day; as you can see, rice is an important part of the Malagasy diet.  There were kebabs and samosas and kingfish and cassava root and fried sweet potato and beans, and altogether it was a splendid dinner.  The way to eat is simply to use the spoon to take a scoop of rice, add a little bit of whatever takes your fancy and eat it as a single shot. And at the end of the meal, you simply roll up the tablecloth to clear the table – a marvellously sustainable approach.

Staff, guests and guides after an excellent traditional Malagasy meal

The last activity of the day was another night walk, with the hope that finally it might be possible to track down the Aye Aye. Once again, I decided to prioritise writing over squelching around in the rain forest (because I thought the likelihood of spotting an Aye Aye was remote), but it wasn’t long before Jane came back from the walk demanding that I come at once to see something.  I knew better than to demur, and so picked up the Big Camera and followed.  This is what the excitement was about – something that Jane herself had spotted – the guides had missed it!

It’s a Leaf-Tailed Gecko – quite a sizeable beast, probably the better part of a foot from top to bottom. It was not at the best angle for photography, so Pascal chivvied it along a bit so we could get a better view.

It has simply extraordinary eyes,

like the Eye of Sauron in Lord of the Rings. Its other noteworthy feature is the leaf-shaped (shed-able) tail; that, together with its tree-bark-and lichen colour scheme, makes it very difficult to see when perching against a large tree. Since this one was on a thin branch, which allowed its shape and pale underbelly to show, it was less well camouflaged.

After that, it seemed a good idea to join in with the walk, so we all carried on, and, indeed, found a few other creatures.

Tufted Tail Rat

Young Brown Leaf Chameleon

Long-nosed Chameleon

And, among some excitement, Pseudoxyrhopus Tritaeniatus, which any fule kno is the posh name for the Three-striped Ground Snake

This one had lost its left eye somehow – we’re not quite sure how.

That was that for the day’s action.  In some ways I regretted not joining in on the canoe outing, but on the other hand I was happy that I had looked through and processed all the outstanding photos and brought the blog up to only a day behind.

This was our last day at Masoala Forest Lodge. The morrow sees us transferring back to Tana in order to continue our Madagascar adventure.  This will be the reverse of our journey out – boat, car, light aircraft – but maybe we’ll see some things worth writing about. Who knows?

Going South

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Friday 16 February 2024 – Just one sleep to go before what is very likely to be an epic journey, at least for Jane and me, both in terms of distance travelled and of cultures explored. For this is definitely an exploration: travelling to Antarctica.

Similarly to our Canada trip, the timing of this one has been bedevilled by events.  We started planning in 2019 for a 2020 trip which fell foul of the first pandemic lockdown.  Subsequent rescheduling then fell victim to the current unpleasantness in Ukraine, which trapped our vessel where it couldn’t get away in time. The excitement has been building, therefore for the best part of five years, and we owe a great deal to the patience, persistence and good humour of Joe Johnson at Sunvil for actually pulling the whole thing together for us.

The vessel we’ll be travelling on, M/V Hondius, is not simply a sort of floating Selfridges, it’s a proper exploration ship – “the first-registered Polar Class 6 vessel in the world, meeting the latest and highest Lloyd’s Register standards for ice-strengthened cruise ships.”  So there.

This is comforting in a way, particularly the knowledge that a Titanic-style end probably doesn’t await us. But I’m finding the overall trip to be a daunting prospect, principally on two counts.

Firstly, given that we’ll be travelling via, and staying for a couple of days in, Buenos Aires (current temperature 29℃) via Ushuaia (9℃) and Port Stanley on the Falkland Islands (12℃, winds gusting to gale force 8) to the pointy bit sticking up to the north of the Antarctic continent* (anywhere from freezing point to -40℃, as far as I can work out), how to pack for the variety of conditions?

Secondly – and much more importantly – the strictures placed, quite rightly, on visitors to the Antarctic and South Georgia are quite draconian.  There is a huge emphasis placed upon biosecurity generally and fighting avian flu particularly.  Whatever the conditions, we will be obliged to wear waterproof trousers and jackets, being careful about carrying everything with us in only one waterproof bag, and only being allowed to stand once we land: no sitting, squatting or putting anything down on the ground.  I absolutely understand and support the need for and the importance of these, but it’s going to make handling camera gear into a non-trivial task, complicated further, of course, by the need to wear robust enough gloves.

Here’s our cruise itinerary, spanning some three weeks in total.

This is, of course, only an initial plan – specific destinations will be subject to weather and sea conditions, as you’d expect.  But it’s an exciting prospect as well as a daunting one.

I’m hoping to get some suitably dramatic scenery photographs of snow and mountains (somewhat different from my recent skiing holiday vistas). Also, of course, there will be plenty of opportunities to take photos of the wildlife – seals, whales and a wide variety of birdlife, from albatrosses to terns. Among all the possibilities there are nearly a dozen types of whale, over half a dozen varieties of seals and penguins, five sorts of albatross and nearly two dozen different kinds of petrel.  So I doubt there will be a petrel shortage (indeed, I expect to Fulmar boots) and I might even get a shag out of the trip. But please don’t skua my pretensions, at least for the moment.

There are many challenges ahead, almost none of which are of any great pith or moment. What photographic gear to take? Will I be able to cope with being offline for possibly days on end?

I will write about them as I go along, but I have no idea as to when I’ll be able to publish anything. I hope you’ll be patient enough to wait for and then read about the trip, so watch this space!

 

*   Yes, I know that everything sticks up to the north of Antarctica