Day 30 – September 30 2012

There were light showers passing through as we packed this morning & departed Kingscote.  Our first destination was Seal Bay, aptly, to see the seals, or more correctly, the Australian Sea-Lion.  We paid our fee to the National Parks people to use the boardwalk down to the beach & the viewing platform as we decided we didn’t need the guided tour & walk on the beach with the seals.  We were in luck, bumping into Libby again returning from viewing the seals, the rain showers had eased & we had the viewing platform all to ourselves for a long time.  There were lots of seals lying on the beach & in the sand dunes sunning themselves, the young seal pups waiting for their mothers to return.  The males are very large animals, weighing up to 200kg, they are certainly formidable looking up close.  We enjoyed watching all of the interactions between the seals as they moved around, playing in the water, asserting authority over another, feeding the young pups.  We could have stayed watching them for hours, but we noticed a large rain squall coming so decided to walk back up to the shelter of the information centre.  There was also a large whale skeleton laying in the dunes.

We then drove to Vivonne Beach, supposedly ranked one of the best beaches in Australia.  Well, we drove around the dirt road on the cliff top, couldn’t find a place to park, so kept driving.  None the wiser for how good or bad this beach is.

Next stop was the Andermel Marron Farm & Café for lunch.  The marron is a form of freshwater crayfish & here they farm them commercially for sale to restaurants, either live or frozen, all over Australia.  The marrons are raised in large dams & take 2 to 3 years to reach the right size for sale.  Needless to say, we both had marron for lunch & it was absolutely delicious, the chef did a fabulous job.  We left very satisfied.

We continued on towards Flinders Chase National Park & stopped just short of the park entrance at the Western Kangaroo Island Caravan Park.  This park is set amongst some trees, with some open grassed area leading down to a lagoon, then sheep paddocks further on.  After setting camp we went on the Lagoon Walk, in light showery rain.  We saw so many Tammar wallabies, there must be hundreds of them here, a few kangaroos & lots of different birds, a veritable bird-watcher’s paradise.  The Cape Barren Geese seemed very quiet & let us get very close to them.

Tonight is a full moon & outside on the grass there are hundreds of these little Tammar wallabies feeding, you can walk right up to them, they are so cute looking.