Day 33 - 19th Mar 2009

Breakfast today was pancakes, again cooked on the BBQ outside, very tasty! It's perhaps worth mentioning at this point that Australian BBQs are completely different to what we think of when we say BBQ. Their's are a big sheet of metal heated by gas, so effectively like a huge frying pan, which is how you can cook pancakes on them (and Chinese Stir Fry; Spag Bol or Bacon and Eggs...)

After breakfast it was off to Seal Bay to see Australian Sea Lions. We actually got to walk on the beach where they were as part of a guided tour which meant that we could get pretty close to them. Some of the males were massive.

The next stop was Little Sahara which is basically a couple of huge sand dunes. Here we had a go at sandboarding, which basically involes throwing yourself down the sand dunes head first on a small wooden board. You got upto some pretty high speeds and it was great fun. The only part of it which wasn't so much fun was trying to scramble back up the sand dunes afterwards to have another go, as you took a step you kept sliding backwards which made it pretty slow going and after about 3 or 4 goes everone was pretty worn out. Then we had a quick stop at a beach for a swim to wash away all of the sand which was now everywhere. Though I chickened out because I remembered how cold the water was from the day before, but Liz went in.

Then it was back to the farm for our usual picnic lunch. As we got back into the bus after lunch Hamish told us that there had been a bit of a change of plan for the afternoon as the fishing boats which were due to take us back to the mainland had become stuck somewhere and so we were going to have to take the main ferry which everyone else uses. However this didn't leave till 7:30 rather than the 4:30 we were expecting so we had an extra afternoon on the island to do some extra things.

So first stop on our extended Island tour was a honey farm where we got to try all different types of honey and I had some honey flavoured ice cream! There is an interesting story about the honey on Kangaroo Island as originally there were no native bees on the Island. But some of the early settlers missed their honey so much that one of them went to Italy and brought back 12 bee hives of Italian bees to start honey making on the island back in the 1800s. Now the interesting thing is that some years later the particular breed of Italian bees actually became extinct in Italy and in fact anywhere else in the world apart from on Kangaroo Island. As a result the bees on the Island are now a protected species with some strict rules to look after them.

Next stop just down the road was Kingscote the island's capital, though that might make it sound more than it actually is, which is really quite a small town. Here we saw some huge pelicans waiting to be fed. Then we were off to one last beach before heading to the ferry. On the way to the beach we passed an Echidna, these are weird hedgehog like animals, quite rare.

We arrived back in Adelaide at about 10:30 pretty tired and ready for bed.