Monday, May 9, 2011

Adelaide Day 3 - Kangaroo Island

Day 3 was spent entirely at Kangaroo Island, exploring as much as we could. This is the Ford Focus which we rented for the journey and parked just outside the service apartment of the Aurora Ozone Hotel which we stayed for the 2 nights. The seafront facing the hotel is tranquil and there were hardly any cars on the road. Lavender on the walkway outside the hotel.
Our first stop for the day was to Seal Bay.
Seal Bay is on the south coast of the island, and is famed for being the permanent home to a colony of some 500 rare Australian sea lions. The broadwalk from the visitor centre to the beach is really user-friendly, and Oliver and Heidi were walking happily in the morning sun towards the colony of sea lions.
They are really cool kids on the catwalk.
The sea lions loll about on the sands and in the dunes, nurture their young and recover from days at sea.

Sea lions everywhere.
More sea lions.
Heidi fishing for coins in her pocket.
Seals dotted the coastline.
Seal Bay... not a bad place to visit on a balmy day.
Next, we headed for Little Sahara. The place was a little obscure and we nearly missed it as we were speeding along the highway.
As the name suggested, it was a beautiful of the Sahara I guess. Waves of sand dunes about 15 metres high could be seen as we climbed the first ridge.
Little Sahara is a nice little place where the locals like to come here to sandboard.

Heidi liked Little Sahara too and roamed around on her own.
After that we drove to nearby Vivonne Bay, which was voted by Sydney University as the most beautiful beach a few years ago based on privacy, clarity of water and cleanliness.
But Heidi is a scary cat... refusing to be anyway near the water.
On the way to lunch, toilet break in the middle of nowhere.
We didn't try the marron the last time we were in Perth, so this time I was determined to have one in Adelaide. So we headed to the quite famous Marron Cafe in the middle of the island, driving through a unpaved track off the main highway. The place is primarily a marron farm supplying the cafe, and probably elsewhere, with their marron that are bred in holding tanks. We went to take a look at the tanks after our lunch, and saw and array of marron, some babies, some blue, some ready to be cooked.
Marron is like lobster, except that it is freshwater crayfish. Surprisingly, the cafe here is relatively crowded even though it is like quite out of the way.
The staff here weren't too friendly or patient though. Maybe they were shorthanded. They gave a piece of colouring paper to us, and when we asked for more since there were 4 kids, it didn't come.
Meal times was quite challenging for us over the last few days. Either they were throwing tantrums or refusing to eat, especially Oliver.
So it was good that the colouring paper (when it finally came) kept Oliver and Heidi busy. This is Oliver's masterpiece. Gone were the days when he would colour out of line and all over the place.
It didn't dissapoint. The marron and seafood and even the naan were delicious. Heidi finished off the skewered prawns.
Next stop, to the Admiral's Arch and Remarkable Rocks found in Flinders Chase National Park. Similar to Seal Bay, the walkway here leads us to a colony of New Zealand fur seals.
The cliff face moulded by the sea and time.
Seals lazing in the sun.
At the end of the walkway is the spectacular arch sculpted by weathering and erosion from the sea over thousands of years.Plants that look like jelly beans.
Just a stone's throw away is Remarkable Rocks.
What makes this place so remarkable is both the rocks, which take on sculptured organic shapes, and their percarious position, perching on a large dome foundation which sits on a high cliff overlooking the southern ocean.
Australia is famous for it's red rocks, with the biggest one in the world located in Central Australia called Uluru, or Ayers Rock. Remarkable Rocks is also red, but unlike Ayers which is caused by rusting iron oxide, the redness in remarkable stem from a tiny living plant called a lichen. The interesting thing about lichens is that they are very susceptible to pollution, and their presence often indicates a very clean environment.
The 2 boys silhouetted against the skyline.

The hole in the rock is like a crack in a dinosaur egg.