Kangaroo Island

So unfortunately we had to say goodbye to our good friends the Hutchinsons yesterday. They arrived in Adelaide from Sydney on 15 Jan. We picked them up from the airport and headed directly south to Cape JervisKangaroo Island. The road down winds a lot and poor Madi (their 6-year old) got sick and puked all over the back of the minivan. She then proceeded to carry a ‘comfort’ plastic bag around with her for the next little bit and happily she didn’t get sick again J Kevin, myself and the two older boys (poor Hunter had to hang out in the puke mobile with all the other girls) were in ‘old betsy’; the beauty of a small little 4-door Hyundai about the size of a Geo Storm back home. More to come from old betsy later … which is where we picked up the ferry to head over to Kangaroo Island.

After taking the 45-minute ferry over to Kangaroo Island (you can see the island pretty well from Cape Jervis) we headed over to the Honey Farm. Kangaroo Island is supposedly renowned for its pure honey because the bees here are of one variety and they don’t allow any honey imports or bees for that matter. We partook of the tasty varieties of honey (not sure how they can make pure honey of a particular tree flower, but whatever), then visited the bee honeycomb site which allows you to see the bees dancing and making honey … and then bought some honey ice cream. All the kids just took a bit of honey ice cream and then Kevin and I ended up eating about a quart by ourselves because we just couldn’t let it go to waste. Let’s just say I’ve had my fill of honey ice cream for the next decade!

This is where the vacation took a slight turn for the worst. Most the roads out on Kangaroo Island are of the ‘washboard’ variety. In other words, they are dirt and have seen just enough water to make them nasty to drive on. Well, my poor little betsy didn’t handle the roads very well. We were being bounced all over the place – and in the process we started losing power from the engine (not like betsy has a whole lot of get up and go to begin with from those 4 poor little gerbils inside.) In any case, we limped into our accommodation at Kingscote (a nice little house all to ourselves :)) We called a car repair place but looked under the hood before taking it in and noticed that one of the spark plug connectors had completely come out of its spot and was lying on the engine – so only 3 gerbils were getting the kick in the rear. Well, we put the connector back in and whallah … we had the car back in action! That evening we watched the pelicans get fed and flip fish all over the people in the front row and then did a local fish and chips shop (scrumptuous!) We then played games till the wee hours of the morning. (The Hutchinsons love to play games and they brought some pretty good ones with them.)

The next day we did a lot of traveling. In the morning Kevin and I took the kids down to the pier for some fishing. We got some local cockle (squid) and didn’t have much luck except that Kevin and Madison caught a crab that was more hairy than Hunter’s, uh, we’ll leave it at that. We then started our journey around the island. We drove through some of the burnt out areas of the national forests. They had a huge wildfire outbreak there recently and left a lot of areas pretty charred. Of course, the terrain and geography weren’t too different from place to place. It was a fairly mundane drive with a lot of gum trees and that’s about it. We visited two places on the southwest end of the island – one called the Remarkable Rocks which is basically some very out-of-place fancy rocks on the end of a jutted piece of land on the beach. The other was a place where the New Zealand seals hang out and has a cool cave from which you can look out over the ocean. The seals stink the place up, but it’s entertaining the watch them in their natural habitat. Stacy mentioned how cool it would be to see the Great Whites coming up for a ‘bite’ --- since it is supposedly one of the most populated locations for Great Whites. We then stopped at some sand dunes on the way back to our home and rented some sleds and a ‘sandboard’ which we used to slide down the dunes. It was as close as we are going to come to a wintery, white sledding adventure this January :)

On Thursday we relaxed and went to a hidden beach which required one to walk through some rock formations. The other side had an awesome natural enclosure for the kids to play in (only the size of maybe a couple tennis courts.) I took my goggles and went swimming down around the rocks and there were just tons of fish varieties – and none could get out to the ocean until the tide came back in. The other side of the ‘lake’ was open to the ocean and was about waste deep for a good 100 meters and there were a few waves. Savannah wasn’t too crazy about them, but I forced her to go out for a minute anyway. The water on Kangaroo Island was so nice and clean. It went from the deep dark blue out in the far ocean to the light turquoise and green closer to shore. Later that evening we went to an aquarium and took a tour to see some fairy penguins (it was a rough, windy day and so most of them hadn’t returned from there hunting expeditions in the ocean.) We did see a couple which was good for the kids.

The last day on the island we drove back to the ferry and took a rough trip over the water. Both Kevin and Stacy got a little queezy, but luckily it wasn’t too far and we all survived without any problems. We ventured over to Victor Harbor for a bit and let the kids do some rides and play games at a carnival and play at the Thomas park. They had a good time just getting out of the car! We finished with some chili chocolate and throwing some coins in the whale tail fountain.

Saturday we relaxed a bit and tried to recover a bit from the Kangaroo Island trip. We went up to the strawberry farm at Handorf and then visited our favorite ice cream shop and the helicopter park – after which we all literally crashed that evening and through Sunday. Monday was good times at the ever-popular Big Rocking Horse and the Gorge wildlife park – especially the part where the baby emus were chasing Stacy and the kids and all Kevin and I could do was laugh and take pictures.

We were sad to see them go Tuesday morning. They are great friends and their kids were very good friends for our little ones. Hopefully sometime in the not-so-distant future we’ll be able to spend ‘heaps’ more time together. Check out their blog on the right for more details and pictures of a super, awesome vacation.