Tag Archives: Wildlife

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

A Day in Litchfield National Park

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Friday 23 August 2024 – Our stay in Darwin was really more of a staging post between the Kimberley cruise and the next segment of our Australia trip, more of which later. However, we had a whole day here, and it was to be filled with an excursion to Litchfield National Park, about 100km south of Darwin. The tour was included in our formal itinerary, but entry tickets to the park were not. These are only available online, so we stumped up the AU$10 each before we set out. At no stage were we asked for evidence that we’d paid our dues, by the way. I don’t know how, or even if, it’s policed in any way.

Anyway, the itinerary included some interesting-looking items, such as seeing termite mounds, rivers and waterfalls, and some of less, OK no, interest – going for a dip by the rivers and waterfalls. It was billed as a “small group” tour, and turned out to be 17 people on a small bus

on a tour led by Emily.

The park was about a 90-minute drive, which included a coffee-and-loo stop

and travel through a countryside which showed some evidence of burning.

Much of the burning was intentional, programmatic and necessary, though there was some evidence of an incidental bush fire – nothing major, though, just some smoking undergrowth.

The indigenous people have developed a detailed understanding of the “right way” to go about burning the bush. Although not nomadic, they would move between seasonal locations, gathering food according to the location, weather and climate. Having harvested, they would burn the area before moving on; so when they returned later on, there was fresh growth breaking through to be harvested again. The controlled burning also removed much of the flammable detritus in the undergrowth so that lightning strike-induced fires were less likely to burn out of control.

On the topic of the indigenous peoples, one of the learnings for me of this trip is of the highly variegated nature of the indigenous cultural geography. Emily told us about the various indigenous peoples whose land we were travelling through, mentioning that the Australian land mass was actually split into some 250 countries, each with its own indigenous people. There’s a very good interactive map, which gives more details, but here’s the overview.

After a while, Emily swung off the road and parked up for our view of the two sorts of termite mounds on display. Termites split broadly into two types – wood-eating and grass-eating – and the first evidence we saw was of the work of grass-eating termites, and plenty of them, too.

If you view from an angle, you can see that each mound is actually a blade-like construction

and each blade is aligned north-south along Earth’s magnetic field. Hence, the termites are called Magnetic Termites.  In mounds built this way the termites receive the warmth of the sun on their eastern and western sides in the morning and evening while exposing less surface to the sun at midday when the nest might overheat.

Each mound belongs to a single queen, who pumps out eggs for several years; while she does this, worker termites are maintaining and growing each mound, the building work being visible as spikes of new material at the top.

When the queen dies, then that’s the end of the colony in that mound; vacated mounds can be distinguished by their lack of spikes.

Eventually, the mounds simply collapse and all the nutrients in their construction are returned to the earth.  What causes the collapse?  Mainly rain.  In the wet season, the fields which look so dry in the photos above can be covered in water, and it’s this which undermines the decaying mounds.

As well as the Magnetic Termite mounds, there were some of the more conventional style of mound, called cathedral mounds.  We had seen plenty of these as we drove along, but there were a couple of monsters at the site where we’d stopped.

Here’s the same thing, with people for scale.

Following the termite mound viewings were visits to three water features.  The first was the Florence Falls

which can be seen from a convenient viewpoint, and then visited by going down some 135 steps

and past the odd occasional sylvan scene.

I had formed a sort of half-hope that I might be able to take a photo of the falls without too many people in it, but it was clear, as we arrived, that this would be unlikely.

Sure, I could take a photo of the falls

but the wider picture was all full of people.

It seems that Australians are incapable of passing by a scene like this without throwing themselves in, something which requires too much faffing about to be of any interest to me. But it was a hot day, and I suppose it’s a way of cooling off.

In the trees surrounding the falls there were flying foxes – fruit bats.

And Jane captured a photo which demonstrates very clearly why Pandanus is sometimes called “screw pine”.

The second water feature, Buley Rockholes, was less dramatic

but equally crowded.

 

The third, Wangi Falls, was probably the most photogenic.

The other entertainment for the day was a “crocodile cruise”, on the Adelaide River. Having seen some crocodiles as we cruised the Kimberley, I guess I was expecting a quiet half-hour pottering up and down the river spotting crocodiles.  On the other hand, as we approached our cruise, there were signs for “Jumping Croc Tours” and similar, so I began to wonder if we would see something a bit more dynamic. I half-remember a crocodile cruise in the USA, about 30 years ago, where we were treated to the sight of a largish croc called Elvis leaping out of the water to catch bait dangled for him.

Our cruise leader was a chap called Rex

who ran a small and slightly ramshackle operation, but who was friendly, quite well-organised and knowledgeable.  He spent a reasonable amount of time explaining that we were dealing with saltwater crocodiles (“salties”), which are large, voracious and very, very dangerous – so no limbs or extremities outside the boat, or even camera lenses, as these could be the target of an attack. He pointed out that crocodiles, like sharks, have been unchanged by evolution over millions of years – in other words they are as good at their job as they could be, and that job involves stealth, aggression and voraciousness. We noted that Rex was wearing a gun.

After the preliminaries, we went off on to his boat –

– the smallest on the river, apparently, but still well-guarded with bars and solid steel mesh, only slightly bent, he told us, in encounters with salties  – and set off, with Rex telling us about the life of crocodiles on the Adelaide River.

Salties are very different from fresh water crocodiles (called, logically enough, “freshies”) – larger, much more aggressive and highly territorial.  We started off in the territorial waters of a large male called Sneaky.  Whilst we waited for him, there was the opportunity of capturing a couple of shots of local bird life.

It seemed the parrots weren’t too afraid of the hawk, though.

Rex attracted Sneaky to the boat using chunks of chicken dangled off a pole. A long pole. When he turned up, it was quite disconcerting to see how big he was and how evil he looked.

He was called Sneaky for a reason – he actually managed to snaffle the first piece of chicken whilst it was still underwater, but eventually Rex was able to get him to jump and take the bait. It was so swift and dramatic, that it was impossible adequately to capture by photo or video – for one chicken nugget he jumped so high that his head was higher than the roof of the boat; then he crashed against the side of the boat as he went down, which was really rather alarming.

Rex wasn’t just doing circus tricks; our time with him was quite educational as well as being disconcertingly dramatic. He introduced us to a female called Flicker, whom he also inveigled into taking bait, but he explained that she had to be cautious because Sneaky, the alpha male of the stretch of water, was still around.

We moved up the river into another male’s territory.  This one was called Gnasher. He’s a big bastard.

We also had a visit from a whole herd of Whistling Kites.

On the way back to his dock, Rex explained to us the import of territoriality. Any stretch will have an alpha male; alpha status is settled by fighting, if necessary to the death, and imposes a kind of order to the crocodile community. So when it was decided that there were too many crocodiles (for which, read: too many people killed in accidents) and it was decided to cull some of the alpha males, the result was actually carnage. Instead of making the river safer, it resulted in a whole series of fights as the remaining crocodiles established the new chomping order. It’s now reasonably accepted that culling is not a good idea, and the crocs are allowed to get on with life in their own way.

The crocs we saw today were much larger and more frightening than any others I had come across, and my respect for them has only increased.  It was an entertaining and educational hour or so we spent with Rex.

After that was just the journey back to the hotel and preparation for the morrow when, as I say, we embark on the next segment of our Australian trip. We will travel from Darwin to Adelaide; exactly how we go about this is something you’ll have to come back and read about another day.

Kimberley Day 6 – Swift Bay

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Sunday 18 August 2024 – Sorry, you’ve got Steve again, writing about my day, even though I wasn’t allowed out of the cabin. Jane went on the day’s expedition, but it was mainly about the rock art and she’ll talk about that in a minute.

I was able to take a few photos of passing interest from our veranda as the ship was at anchor. A large crocodile was clearly visible in the water quite near the ship.

A little context might help. Here’s how the croc looked, as Zodiacs headed for the shore. I put the red ring round it, as its cunning camouflage makes it difficult to spot; there wasn’t some kind of clever croc limiter in place.

I thought I saw a shark

but, a little disappointingly, it turned out to be some kind of dolphin.

The clincher, as any fule kno, was that the tail fins were horizontal (cetacean) rather than being vertical (fish).

There was a whale, too, not that that is a huge amount to write home about; if I’d missed it, I suppose I might have wanted to blubber. In fact, there were (at least) two – mother and calf, we suspect.

I marshalled the mighty capabilities of my Nice New Nikon to try to capture The Perfect Shot as the whale spouted, and took lots of stills as it did so during its cetacean equivalent of the paseo. I couldn’t decide which was the best, so here they all are.

That sequence is made from successive stills from the camera; I’m very impressed with its ability to make up for the shortcomings of its user.

I’m also impressed that the captain, having alerted us to the whale’s presence to port (I could see it from our cabin), stopped the boat and actually turned it around so that the starboard-based plague-ridden people could take a look.

From my point of view, that was the main excitement of the day so far; I’m expecting that the medics will check me out later. Until then, here’s Jane:

Today’s expedition was to view more rock art in the rock shelters formed by the heavily fractured sandstone making up Swift Bay.

A short walk brought us to a linked series of shelters formed by rock overhangs;

it is thought that the different shelters were used for different activities: cooking and eating; sleeping; and teaching the children. There was a fairly large midden of shells outside the gallery.

As we’ve established, it would not be respectful to share photos of the rock art, fascinating as it is, but the website of the Wunambal Gaambera people, title holders of this area of land, has a few words about, and a few images of, the Swift Bay site here which I feel comfortable sharing, since they have!

As well as the rock art, there was some striking rock stuff (as we’ve come to expect here in the Kimberley).

Medical update

Steve again: to misquote the bible, I’ve been (medically) weighed in the balance and found wanting (not sure whether this is Mene, Tekel or Upharsin [Tekel – Ed]). I still have a raised temperature, and so my isolation must continue. There were a couple of very frustrating aspects to this. Firstly, Lucille, the medical assistant who assessed me, told me that the criteria for release, all other vital signs being normal, include two successive days of normal body temperature. This being the case, I should just about be let out in time to disembark in Darwin, which is not a pleasing prospect, particularly as there’s one expedition I’m very keen to participate in. Secondly, I should have been taking paracetamol, as this might have lowered my temperature (I didn’t realise it was an anti-pyretic, actually). So, if I’d gone against my normal “medicate only if strictly necessary” approach, I might have been let out.  As it is, I face the bleak prospect of at least two more days stuck in the cabin. At least it’s a comfortable prison cell…

On the schedule tomorrow are two excursions within the engagingly-named Vansittart Bay. Excitingly, one of these does not involve rock art, so there may be a decent crop of photos for us to share.  Keep your eyes on these pages to find out, eh?