Kangaroo Island: Snake and Seal Bay

Our latest adventure was an overnight trip to Kangaroo Island - Australia's third largest island.

The island is 155km wide and home to 4400 people, but for the most part it is unspoiled wilderness and national parks.  For the first time, I actually felt like I was in Australia.

Because the trip was so great I have lots to tell, so I will be post an entry for each attraction instead of each day.  That way I won't feel bad about making the entries too long and leaving out great pictures!

Our trip started at 5am on Monday.  We had a 2 hour bus ride from downtown Adelaide to Cape Jarvis, a 45 minute ferry ride to Penneshaw, and then we picked up our rental car on the island.  All of the pre-packaged, 2-day tours had the overnight stay in Penneshaw, but that didn't make any sense to me so I booked our night at the only "hotel" on the west side of the island (point A on map).  This meant that we only had to drive one way the first day, then home the second day.  The tours also stopped in many places we didn't care about (the honey farm, lavender farm, sheep milking, eucalyptus distillery, bird of prey demonstration, and pelican feeding) which is why we decided to do a self-drive tour.

On our way to our first attraction, Seal Bay, we had to drive on a red dirt road.  We're driving along and I see what I think is a stick so I plan to run it over, but as I approach it I realize it's a black snake!  If you remember back to Ryan's post awhile ago, he warned never to drive over snakes or they coil around your wheel and eventually work their way into your car.  Luckily I missed it and we quickly tried to reverse to see what it was.  Turns out there are only two kinds of snakes on KI, and we're pretty sure we saw the tiger snake.  They weren't due to wake up from their hibernation yet, but lucky us they are early this year.  So we saw our first Australian snake!

Picture from Wikipedia - we didn't get a picture

The one we saw was all black, but the patterns vary greatly from snake to snake.   It was probably just over a metre long.  As usual, it is venomous and potentially lethal if a bite is untreated.

Moving on...we did eventually get to Seal Bay!  We had a nice picnic lunch overlooking the ocean and the sea lions lying on the beach.  After lunch we did a guided tour where we actually walked on the beach with the sea lions.  This particular kind, the Australian sea lion, is very endangered and we saw the last remaining colony in the world.  As the guide pointed out "there are less Australian Sea Lions than polar bears."  It was actually a very fun experience, and even more special for Ryan since he hasn't seen sea lions up close before.  It didn't hurt that the beach was beautiful!  Enjoy the pictures and play "count the sea lions"; they're really hard to spot sometimes!

Our standard picnic lunch: bread, cheese, and a new addition of "spiced pear spread"

View from picnic spot

A little closer, same area of the beach.  Can you count the sea lions now?

These guys were sleeping up in the bushes and waddled down so we had to get out of their way.

More Birds

On our trip to the Gold Coast we saw tons of new birds.  Some of these I just saw locally, but most we saw on our trip.  I tried to put the most interesting ones at the top for all of you who don't care!  

Laughing Kookaburra

The Kookaburra is apparently pretty common in Australia, but we just hadn't seen one until our trip.  It had been eluding us for a few days, but we finally tracked down it's crazy bird call and with Ryan's telephoto camera lens we were able to see it.  It seemed after that we saw them everywhere!

Pale-headed Rosella

We stopped for lunch at a tiny place in Springbrook National Park and these guys were in the yard eating out of their bird feeders.  That's also where we saw the cockatoo.

Australian King-Parrot

Another one of Ryan's discoveries.  We saw these guys when we were trying to find the kookaburra.  They're about the size of a cockatoo.

Sulphur-crested Cockatoo

Australian Brush-turkey

We saw a bunch of these just walking around everywhere. 

Cattle Egret

Straw-necked Ibis

Australian White Ibis

White Faced Heron

Eastern Yellow Robin

Dusky Moorhen

Purple Swamphen

Brown Cuckoo-Dove

Brush Bronzewing

Little Pied Cormorant

Willie Wagtail

Fork-tailed Swift

These guys fly really fast so I'm surprised anyone could get a good picture of them!

Australasian Grebe

Pacific Black Duck

Mallard

Australian Wood Duck

Domestic Duck

Gold Coast Day 3 and 4

Our third day on the Gold Coast was much like our first day, in that we checked out a few more nature parks and mountain views.  Although I didn't think it was possible, the drive was even more nail biting than the first day!  Our destination was Springbrook National Park, which was supposedly more rustic and less touristy than the neighbouring Lamington National Park.  There are so many little parks in the area that I would love to go back and explore even more.  Also on the map you can see where Tamborine National Park is, between Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

We found 4 or 5 lookouts and short walks which provided all of these amazing views.

Once we got off the mountain we ended up driving through some really beautiful lowlands and fields, which was a completely different experience from everything else we had done that day.

On our last day, after we checked out of the hotel, we still had a few hours to explore before our flight that afternoon.  We decided to do another picnic lunch, but this time at Surfers Paradise.  The weather wasn't as good, which made for some massive waves and great pictures.

One of the hotels in Surfers Paradise (the Q1) is the second tallest building in the southern hemisphere (tallest is in Melbourne I believe) and they have an observation deck about 75 stories high.  Since we were kind of just wandering around we decided to check it out, but they wanted $21/person to go up!!!  We figured since our hotel room was already 25 stories high we had seen enough heights for one trip and opted out.  Oh well!

So as you can see, we had a great time.  We managed to do everything we wanted to do, but I'm sure there is still plenty more to see.  Stay tuned for a post about all of the cool birds we saw!

Gold Coast Day 1 and 2

This week Ryan and I took our first real trip in Australia, and boy am I excited for more!  We went to the Gold Coast which was absolutely beautiful and exactly the type of trip we were looking for.

We flew into Brisbane on Sunday morning and rented a car to drive to the Gold Coast.  On the way to our hotel we decided to stop at Tamborine National Park, where we were hoping to find some short walks and beautiful views from the mountain.  An added bonus that we weren't expecting was a very crazy, twisty drive up the mountain with many switchbacks and steep slopes.  The drive was a bit nerve-wracking, but completely worth it.  Unlike in Canada where you have to earn your beautiful views by doing long hikes, here it seems like they let you drive to them!  Luckily we had a tiny car or it would have been much harder. 

The main thing we did at Tamborine National Park was go on a short rainforest walk.  I was completely in awe because it was the first time I have ever really walked through a rainforest, and it was super cool!  The pictures do not do it justice, but it was very lush with all sorts of really neat trees.  The best part was the crazy bird sounds, which really set the mood.  It felt like I was in a Planet Earth video!  The best trees were these strangler figs, which climb up existing trees and completely suffocate them. 

On the way down the mountain we also passed this beautiful view.  Unfortunately by then it had started to rain so the pictures is a bit blah.

Instead of getting a typical hotel, we got a serviced apartment.  It was absolutely amazing with a huge balcony and beautiful ocean views.  It also had a fully equipped kitchen so we were able to cook a few meals ourselves which was a nice change.  For anyone coming to visit Australia, I would highly recommend going to the Gold Coast and staying where we stayed. 

The next day we  woke up (at 6:30am) to this spectacular sunrise.  Of course I got up to take the picture, but I could see this from my bed! 

Monday was dubbed "beach day".  We were staying on Broadbeach which was just south of Surfers Paradise, and consequently it was much less crowded (if you can even call it that).  We went and picked up stuff for a picnic lunch and spent the morning until 2pm just reading and lazing on the beach.  The water was still too cold to swim, but it was a beautiful day.  You can see Surfers Paradise where all of the high-rises are in the first picture.

Then, FINALLY, I got to try surfing!  Our instructor was a stereotypical Aussie surf bum who said things like "far out".  I'm going to admit, it was much harder than I had expected.  By the end of the lesson I was able to stand for a few seconds on a wave, but that was about it.  Lots of fun but I don't think I missed my calling!

And thus concludes this post.  Stay tuned for day 3 and 4 of our adventure!  

Port Adelaide

Recently I've been trying to explore a little bit more of the Adelaide area, so on Sunday I ventured to Port Adelaide.

As you can see, it's connected to the ocean by a river, and from what I understand it's where a bunch of fishing boats come in.  I was expecting a quaint little harbour town, but that really wasn't what it was at all.  I also found out that they have a market there every Sunday, so I thought that would give me a good backup plan in case the town was a let down.  When I arrived I went to the tourist information centre and they informed me that they have dolphin river cruises for only $6, so naturally that's exactly what I did! 

While waiting for the cruise to start I actually saw a few dolphins from shore  One came up to within 6 feet of me which was pretty cool.  Anyways, the cruise was kind of ridiculous and I couldn't stop giggling to myself at the funny situation.  Basically we just cruised up to where the river met the ocean and turned around, which took 2 hours.  The funny parts were that we only saw a few dolphins, it was pouring rain for parts of it, and the "scenery" was factories and power plants.  It was worth $6, but not much more! 

View of Port Adelaide from the boat (lighthouse and market building)

Not a great picture, but proof I saw dolphins

Overall, I pretty much have fun no matter what I'm doing so it was a good day.  I also met a German girl from a small town in Bavaria so we chatted for the 2 hours while trying to stay warm and dry. 

Over the past few days I've occupied most of my time with expanding my cooking repertoire.  I have made 2 batches of homemade pasta (pumpkin tortellini, spaghetti and linguini) and a batch of homemade gnocchi.  Gnocchi is seriously the easiest thing to make EVER so if you want a recipe, let me know!  Pasta isn't hard either, but requires a pasta machine and infinite amounts of patience (if you're hand folding dozens of tortellini that is…) 

Since yesterday was my birthday, I took the day off and didn't cook or clean at all (woo!) and went shopping downtown instead!  I also went to a sculpt workout class down the street for the first time and since I haven't exercised in 3 months I'm really feeling it today.  Kelsey and I went out for dinner and she made me delicious chocolate cake, so it was a pretty awesome day.  Today I'm sitting outside sweating in a tank top, in the middle of winter, on a "rainy" day with not a cloud in the sky.   Ryan comes home today, then we're off to the Gold Coast from Sunday to Wednesday, so all in all I'm pretty darn lucky to be me.