Kangaroo Island Wonders
I have tons to tell you and only 45mns before dinner - assuming the wallabies don't come any earlier tonight otherwise Janet will come and get me as we've already bought the roo food to give them, a must, you understand.
Our journey from Perth to here was actually pretty painless. We had a 2h15 flight only, watched a movie, and before we knew it, we had landed and there was an extra +2h30 on our watches. We are now +10h30 ahead of the UK. So, with 3 hours to spare we hopped on a bus to explore Adelaide's town centre... which was only $3.80 for a 15mn drive. Janet bought a great shirt, a dress and a sparkly bracelet in the first shop we found (suddenly the bargain bus ride didn't seem like a 'bargain' anymore) and after that we had to take it easy since we are already over the limit on our luggage. Thankfully Rex Airlines let us get away with a bit more...
The flight over to Kangaroo Island was again painless, a 30mn hop... perfectly blue skies but the island did look very dry from the air.... very yellow. They have actually had a shortage of rain for the season and are really feeling it.
As soon as we landed we spotted some gorgeous pink cokatoos (whose proper name I've already forgotten) but that surely spelt exotism to me... It was dusk when we landed (7:30pm) but still very light... It seems that because we are the furthest South we will be on our holiday we have gained 2 hours of daylight which is brilliant, especially as we had a 50km drive with a car hire to make it to Penneshaw (we landed at Kingscote).
We did pass a few carcasses but didn't really see any 'live' animals that night. Poor Janet was terrified at the thought of hitting anything at all, especially little penguins (the smallest of the penguins species) as they are known to wander down the streets at night.
We checked in as fast as we could, grabbed a nice dinner (the guy from the car hire had kindly called our hotel in advance to ask them to leave the kitchen open for us as we'd be arriving 90mns past closing time) and headed off to the Penguin Centre for the Penguin Tour.
This was a super treat... we were totally taken by them. This is the breeding season (it lasts a few months) and we saw many chicks that were just 4-6 weeks old, they still had the 'duvet' type of feathers all over their bodies and looked just totally cuddly... but they do have razor shape beaks. The poor mothers often had twins and had to keep one under each wing to feed them. The mothers go out into the sea to fish all day and return at night to regurgerate (is that the word?) and pass the food onto the chicks. But the chicks compete for food and just both try to get the mother's attention at the same time (they are not Brits, they have NO sense of queuing or waiting for their turns). The father does his part and will also go out and help, he also builds the nest and will share half of the incubation period too. Actually it is such a strong partnership that if one of the parents die the remaining parent will find it impossible to bring back enough food for the two chicks to survive and will usually abandon them unless they are close to being mature enough to cope alone. It is was also sad to see some chicks whose parents had 'disappeared' trying to get food out of the other mothers... The said mothers would only focus on their own chicks and let the others to starve - she would be able to smell which chicks are hers. It seems heart-breaking but I guess nature knows best. We even saw a little chick with a bald patch on his head (he had probably been fighting with another) and again, the loss of waterproof coating on that patch would probably mean certain death once he entered the freezing water.
We could have watched them all night, the way they walk, the way they look. True soft toys on the move. I didn't realise they had SO many feathers (blue). There are about 2,000 penguins around Penneshaw, they come year after year to breed in the same burrows, they have 5 times more feathers than normal birds and are entitrely 'waterproof' but for their flippers. The pairs who get together usually mate for life unless one dies and then the other can 're-marry'. What amazed me the most is that penguins pretty much do everything on water but raise their chicks. Because of bubbles of air under their skins acting as mattresses they even sleep on water, between 1 to 4 mns at a time, no more. They can hold their breath up to 1 minute which allows them to dive as far down as 69 meters.
We had a thoroughly enjoying time... and the next day was going to get better...
I have tons to tell you and only 45mns before dinner - assuming the wallabies don't come any earlier tonight otherwise Janet will come and get me as we've already bought the roo food to give them, a must, you understand.
Our journey from Perth to here was actually pretty painless. We had a 2h15 flight only, watched a movie, and before we knew it, we had landed and there was an extra +2h30 on our watches. We are now +10h30 ahead of the UK. So, with 3 hours to spare we hopped on a bus to explore Adelaide's town centre... which was only $3.80 for a 15mn drive. Janet bought a great shirt, a dress and a sparkly bracelet in the first shop we found (suddenly the bargain bus ride didn't seem like a 'bargain' anymore) and after that we had to take it easy since we are already over the limit on our luggage. Thankfully Rex Airlines let us get away with a bit more...
The flight over to Kangaroo Island was again painless, a 30mn hop... perfectly blue skies but the island did look very dry from the air.... very yellow. They have actually had a shortage of rain for the season and are really feeling it.
As soon as we landed we spotted some gorgeous pink cokatoos (whose proper name I've already forgotten) but that surely spelt exotism to me... It was dusk when we landed (7:30pm) but still very light... It seems that because we are the furthest South we will be on our holiday we have gained 2 hours of daylight which is brilliant, especially as we had a 50km drive with a car hire to make it to Penneshaw (we landed at Kingscote).
We did pass a few carcasses but didn't really see any 'live' animals that night. Poor Janet was terrified at the thought of hitting anything at all, especially little penguins (the smallest of the penguins species) as they are known to wander down the streets at night.
We checked in as fast as we could, grabbed a nice dinner (the guy from the car hire had kindly called our hotel in advance to ask them to leave the kitchen open for us as we'd be arriving 90mns past closing time) and headed off to the Penguin Centre for the Penguin Tour.
This was a super treat... we were totally taken by them. This is the breeding season (it lasts a few months) and we saw many chicks that were just 4-6 weeks old, they still had the 'duvet' type of feathers all over their bodies and looked just totally cuddly... but they do have razor shape beaks. The poor mothers often had twins and had to keep one under each wing to feed them. The mothers go out into the sea to fish all day and return at night to regurgerate (is that the word?) and pass the food onto the chicks. But the chicks compete for food and just both try to get the mother's attention at the same time (they are not Brits, they have NO sense of queuing or waiting for their turns). The father does his part and will also go out and help, he also builds the nest and will share half of the incubation period too. Actually it is such a strong partnership that if one of the parents die the remaining parent will find it impossible to bring back enough food for the two chicks to survive and will usually abandon them unless they are close to being mature enough to cope alone. It is was also sad to see some chicks whose parents had 'disappeared' trying to get food out of the other mothers... The said mothers would only focus on their own chicks and let the others to starve - she would be able to smell which chicks are hers. It seems heart-breaking but I guess nature knows best. We even saw a little chick with a bald patch on his head (he had probably been fighting with another) and again, the loss of waterproof coating on that patch would probably mean certain death once he entered the freezing water.
We could have watched them all night, the way they walk, the way they look. True soft toys on the move. I didn't realise they had SO many feathers (blue). There are about 2,000 penguins around Penneshaw, they come year after year to breed in the same burrows, they have 5 times more feathers than normal birds and are entitrely 'waterproof' but for their flippers. The pairs who get together usually mate for life unless one dies and then the other can 're-marry'. What amazed me the most is that penguins pretty much do everything on water but raise their chicks. Because of bubbles of air under their skins acting as mattresses they even sleep on water, between 1 to 4 mns at a time, no more. They can hold their breath up to 1 minute which allows them to dive as far down as 69 meters.
We had a thoroughly enjoying time... and the next day was going to get better...
posted by Sylvie at 7:25 AM
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