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Kangaroo Island is the third largest island in Australia (after Tasmania and some place near Darwen up north) and we assumed it does what it says on the tin. In our two days however we hardly a saw a single one of the creatures, and when we did they didnt seem up for that much fun. Kangaroo Island was without doubt the best thing I have done in Australia so far. It only has a couple of thousand inhabitants and so has some of the most amazing untouched beaches in the world. Literally miles of amazing sand and clear blue water, complete paradise. The water was however freezing, despite the idyllic setting and required a lot of practice to swim in. The three of us went on an organised tour to KI and we did have a pretty quality group. There was only one othere english guy along with us, which was pretty nice, after three weeks of Barmy overload and we were in a group full of young Europeans, a couple of Malaysian girls and an American man in his 50's called Bob, who said he took pictures of kids for a living. hmmmm..... After getting to KI on the ferry mid-morning, we first went to Seal Bay, on the north (probably) of the island and saw some fantastic sealife and got to observe the sealions upclose and personal. It is pretty cool to see them and they are great creatures but they dont do very much and we were quite disappointed when we realised that at 400kgs they were probably too heavy to nick. woulda made a great present for your birthday tho dad...
After a pretty rubbish trip to a eucalyptus factory (the only disappointing thing on Kangaroo Island) we made our way down to Little Sahara, a group of Sand dunes, some of them almost vertical. By chance we were there the same time as Adelaides AFL team (Aussie rules) who come there every year as part of their pre-season training camp. (N.B possible idea for our powerleague team paul???) They did made us look more than a little silly in our attempts to impress our group by running up some of the highest dunes and collapsing after about 20 metres, as they jogged their way to the top. Sandboarding down these dunes was absolutely fantastic, more scary than it looked and blatantly better than snowboarding. Unfortunately I cant upload videos from my camera onto this site so you dont get to see me make a complete tit of myself and stack it about a quarter of the way down, but for some crazy reason this caused much merriment in the group.
After spending lots of time on our arses on boiling hot sand we cooled off on the beaches and in the waters to the south of Kangaroo Island. Amazing beautiful beaches but as I say, far too cold to swim in and we were quite happy to move on to some koala spotting at a nearby nature reserve and then to a famous Aussie bottle shop and purchase the evenings beverages for our campsite. We had a really great evening of drinking round the campfire, a BBQ, Kangaroo spying and good old bonding with our European chums (and Bob). It was really good to finally realise that not all travellers are blokes in their 20's and 30's with en-ger-land shirts and dodgy tatoos and we all had a good laugh with Norway, Dutchie and German (we're nothing if not inventive). The night ended rather disappointingly with me passed out near a table tennis table, nick dancing to Elvis and two Norwegian girls taking great delight in eating hay and sticks from Scott.
Our final day on the island was spent mainly at Kirkpatrick Point, on the South West coast of the Island. If you imagine where this Island is, off the coast of South Australia, then the next bit of land from here is Antarctica. This caused absolute amazement for me but not for anyone else in our group. It did lead to some amazing views of the ocean and as you can guess, the waves there were pretty lively. Leading up to the coast is a group of rocks, the most beautiful of the natural wonders on the island. They are called the 'Remarkable Rocks' and they are indeed fairly remarkable, a cluster of naturally sculpted, massive rocks, stretching hundreds of metres down to the sea. We spent a good while here, particularly as one of the rocks is almost uncannily weather sculpted (i'm dubious) into the perfect shape for a human bum. You can see how much we are enjoying this particular rock in the pictures, but seriously the whole place was a great bit of sightseeing.
We drove back, via miles and miles of bush and on our way home got to see the awe-inspiring Kangaroo Island airport! Heathrow, it aint... Quite a subdued atmosphere from all the group on the ferry home as we'd just had the most amazing two days, but we took it on ourselves to get some of the group together for a final night out in Adelaide, when we arrived back. Unfortunately a quick coupla drinks turned into a great night out with us, Norway, Dutchie and even Bob putting in an appearance and meant that I had a total of 40 minutes sleep before flying to perth the next day. Not something I would particularly recommend....
Kangaroo Island was a really refreshing experience and it made a really nice change from all that cricket, pubs and singing malarky. But after a couple of days there, we were on our way once more, to Western Australia, to Perth, to the third Test and our last chance to save the Ashes and to more Barmy banter. wwwwaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy
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