travel
+ Kangaroo Island
As the name suggests,
Kangaroo Island – just
off the coast of South
Australia – is full of
marsupials. But you’ll
also find incredible
scenery and history,
crafted by the wild
seas that surround it.
Sun shines on the Remarkable Rocks illuminating the incredible
wind- and sea-carved features.
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+ Kangaroo Island
DO
“In the morning
light the ship’s
now-skeletal
ribs were further
illuminated by
violent fires floating
on a violent sea.”
travel
Before I made it to Kangaroo Island, I spent a
pleasant afternoon exploring sections of the Heysen
Trail. The full trail will take you over a month to
complete – it stretches from the Fleurieu Peninsula to
the Flinders Ranges – but a day will give you a taste
of the abundant wildlife and unbelievable scenery of
the southern sections. heysentrail.asn.au
Explore the area around Vivonne Bay from the back
of a four-wheel motorbike with Kangaroo Island
Outdoor Action. I took the Extreme Tour – we
zipped across open pasture and crawled along
rocky track, reaching a deserted beach, pristine and
surf-wracked. The outfit also offers kayak tours, and
sandboarding at the nearby Little Sahara sand dunes.
kioutdooraction.com.au
Eat
The restaurant at the Southern Ocean
Lodge exclusively serves guests of the lodge but if
it was your only reason for staying you wouldn’t be
disappointed. I ate six meals there and can’t think
of a single component I didn’t love. The quail was a
highlight – salty and crispy, but juicy too. But so was
the venison... and the slow-cooked pork shoulder.
The bar is open and included in the price of your stay
so if you think you can do a better job of the wine
matches (hint: you can’t), help yourself to a bottle of
South Australian wine, mix a cocktail, or ask one of
the brilliant staff to do so. southernoceanlodge.com.au
On the mainland, Eat at Whalers combines a
beautiful view with fresh fish – the King George
whiting fillet was delicious. whalersinnresort.com.au
Kangaroo Island Fresh Seafoods in Kingscote is a
gem – incredibly fresh local fish and big servings. It
shares its building with a Caltex, but don’t be put off –
this was the best fish (snapper for me) and chips I’ve
had in a long, long time. kangarooislandfreshseafoods.
blogspot.co.nz
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Clockwise from left: Tiny figures at the top of a cliff show its true scale;
pelicans; a western grey kangaroo; sunset viewed through Admirals Arch.
A
s the sun rose over Kangaroo Island on April 24,
1899, the survivors of the Loch Sloy, a Scottish
vessel that had run ashore, were met with an
incredible sight. The ship’s stores of gunpowder
had ignited and the four survivors, half drowned and
huddling together at the base of the cliffs, looked on in the
morning light as the ship’s now-skeletal ribs were further
illuminated by violent fires floating on a violent sea.
It’s those cliffs – limestone and topped by green scrub –
that come to mind when I think of Kangaroo Island. They
ring the island – some 155km long by 55km at its widest
– and are its most striking feature. Often under attack from
wild seas, the sound of waves crashing against them timed
out my stay like a natural soft metronome. Not much fun to
be stranded at the bottom of, of course, but glorious to look
south from the top of – a view of the Southern Ocean that,
were it not encumbered by the curvature of the earth and
the limitation of the eye, would stretch to Antarctica. There
is no land to mitigate the swells and the wind that flow from
the bottom of the globe, and the combination of those
elements with the rocky cliffs means that on many maps a
halo of symbols denoting shipwrecks surrounds the land.
I visited the approximate site of the Loch Sloy wreck,
near Admirals Arch at the very tip of Cape du Couedic
in Flinders Chase National Park, on a day that couldn’t
make up its mind. It began with thunder, pelting rain, and
lances of lightning streaking across heavy skies, but by
mid-morning there were only spitting showers and fingers
of cloud stretching over the sky. A strong wind blew off the
ocean and the sea – when the sun disappeared
­­
– was an
angry grey swirl of currents, counter currents and crashing
breakers that swilled around the two small offshore islands,
the Casuarina Islets.
A series of wooden boardwalks led through the scrub
and then out, across and down the rocky tip. On either
side of the boardwalk New Zealand fur seals – named by
Captain Cook who found them first in Aotearoa before
finding them elsewhere – sat among the rocks. Pairs nipped
playfully at each other, while lazier seals lay perfectly still
among the rocks like overgrown slugs. Commercial sealing
obliterated much of the island’s seal population and it was
only in the 60s that this particular colony began to recover.
The rocky arch was once a sand dune, but over time it
calcified – the twisted remains of tree roots form a veil on
the ceiling – before the waves carved this great absence.
They are carving it still – I walked as far under the arch
as the boardwalk allowed, the waves sending their misty
remnants to dampen my face from the other side of the
loop. The arch framed the ocean, which looked no less
rough for the seals I began to spot in the foamy water once
my eyes grew accustomed to the shadow cast by the
rocks. Toby, a precocious Californian child on the same tour,
afterwards announced to the bus that Admirals Arch was
the highlight of his family’s month-long Australian trip.
A little to the east of Admirals Arch, on a cape that
marks one edge of Weirs Cove, lie the Remarkable Rocks.
Whoever bestowed that name on this landmark may have
wanted for imagination, but not for accuracy. The wind
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+ Kangaroo Island
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“In places, bright
orange lichen
blanketed the rock in
striking contrast to
the white-capped sea
beyond it..”
Clockwise from top left: Pennington Bay; a road winds through Kangaroo Island bush; the waters
around Kangaroo Island are often not kind to sea-bound craft; Stokes Bay.
and sea spray have carved what once must have been
enormous granite blocks perched on a rock dome into
surreal shapes, like great modernist sculptures – twisted,
huge, beautiful. I wandered among them, through ravines
and under overhanging rocks that enveloped me whole,
admiring their near-industrial perfection. In places, bright
orange lichen blanketed the rock in striking contrast to the
white-capped sea beyond it.
Waves frothed against the base of the dome – I was
thankful the strong wind was coming off the ocean and
not blowing towards it; people have lost their lives here
by venturing too close to the edge and slipping into the
surf below. It was just another reminder of the power of
the sea – not that I needed it as I stood under the towering
and profoundly weird shapes the roiling sea played a hand
in sculpting.
If the sea is powerful, it is also beautiful, and there is
nothing more satisfying than safely contemplating it. It
would reflect the personality of the day and in the sunshine
it lost its threatening aspect and became a perfect
aqua blue, slightly clouded close to shore by runoff from
the cliffs. It is not difficult to see why, when Europeans
first arrived, Kingscote, the biggest town on the island,
was suggested as the South Australian capital. But, like
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me, those settlers had arrived in winter. The island was
green and lush as I drove around, punctuated by lovely
dark groves of eucalyptus and spiky-headed yucca trees,
with unsealed roads of ferric red stretching into the interior,
lined on each side by splashes of yellow wattle flower. When
summer hit, the settlers realised there wasn’t enough water
to sustain a significant population and Adelaide was chosen
instead. Today Kangaroo Island’s population hovers around
only 4000.
But that is the appeal. I stayed at the Southern Ocean
Lodge near Flinders Chase National Park, which occupies
the westernmost chunk of the island. It’s in the middle of
nowhere, a significant drive from the nearest shop. It was
just me, a handful of other guests, luxury within, and the
wilderness without. The lodge, with 21 suites that follow
the cliff line down the coast, all with a beautiful view of the
rolling breakers in Hanson Bay below, takes pride in being
ecologically sensitive and in getting guests into the nature
that surrounds it.
Which, of course, is full of kangaroos. Captain Matthew
Flinders, the man who led the first circumnavigation of
Australia, named the island for the enormous number
of western greys that to this day call the island home.
The kangaroos Flinders and his men met were unused
stay
In Victor Harbour, on the mainland,
Whalers combines huge, self-contained
apartments with incredible views of Encounter
Bay – get lucky and you might spot a whale.
whalersinnresort.com.au
You’ll need to pass through Adelaide so why
not stay at the Hilton? The location is very
handy to the Central Market and the popular
Gouger Street, and the rooms are very nice.
hilton.com
Southern Ocean Lodge is the place
to stay on Kangaroo Island. The views
are breathtaking, the minimal design is
gorgeous, and the grandiose (yet somehow
lounge-like) Great Room is perfect for
a preprandial drink while you strike up
conversation with other guests. The
lodge deals in inclusive packages, which
will get you out admiring the beauty
of the island with expert guides – all
excursions in the main story followed
the itinerary presented to me on
arrival. More an experience than just
a place to stay, it is simply stunning.
southernoceanlodge.com.au
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travel
+ Kangaroo Island
Above: Another twisted example from the Remarkable Rocks.
Right: The cliff-lined coast of Kangaroo Island.
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Contact southaustralia.co.nz
Aussie travel is better together – with the Air New Zealand and Virgin Australia
alliance, we offer more than 200 return flights a week between 26 cities in New
Zealand to more than 35 cities in Australia.
Air New Zealand
offers non-stop
flights from Auckland
to Adelaide, with
connections from
across the domestic
network.
Kangaroo island
Photographs Corbis, Getty Images
to humans – Aboriginal occupation ceased, somewhat
mysteriously, thousands of years before – and were easy
prey for the ravenous crew.
Before dinner one evening, a group of us set out with a
guide from the lodge to a former farm where a huge number
of kangaroos come to graze in the evenings. Dozens and
dozens of them stood in the field, mostly untroubled by the
eight of us who wandered among them. Their coats were
red in the slanting sun, which cast their shadows far across
the meadow. Only when I came within five metres or so
would they raise their heads to peer at me, lowering them
again if I stood still. As the sun sank behind the eucalyptus
trees I walked back to the original old farmhouse where
canapés and drinks had been laid out, hurried on my way by
a magpie that had taken exception to me.
But I didn’t even need to leave the lodge to understand
why Kangaroo Island is renowned as Australia’s Galapagos.
On my last morning all I had to do was look up from my
pancakes to see a southern right whale and her calf basking
in the bay below. As they disappeared from view I finished
my coffee and got ready to leave for the airport. My ferry
had been cancelled due to bad weather, but even this minor
inconvenience seemed appropriate. The ocean that had so
captivated me during my stay determined how it ended, and
I was just glad not to risk adding another shipwreck symbol
to the map.
Story James Borrowdale