Day 31 – October 1 2012

Flinders Chase National Park was our destination this morning.  It is only a short distance to the visitor centre from our camp. There are lots of Cape Barren Geese feeding on the grass near the visitor centre, after calling in & paying the national park fees we drove to the Cape Du Couedic through some different types of landscape.  Today was the first time we have seen large trees on Kangaroo Island, mostly the trees are the shorter mallee gum.  As we got closer to the coast the effects of a recent bushfire could be seen, with the dead skeletal remnants of trees poking out above the dense new growth. Closer to the coast again & the vegetation became very low & windblown, scattered amongst the rocky limestone ground.  The Cape Du Couedic lighthouse stands sentinel over this part of the coast & was completed in 1909 after a number of shipwrecks on this southern extremity of Kangaroo Island.  We had a look around the lighthouse before heading down the hill to Admirals Arch.

Admirals Arch is the site of a large New Zealand Fur Seal colony.  We spent a long time looking at the young seals playing around in the water, leaping out like dolphins & chasing each other around.  The older seals generally just lay in the sun sleeping, occasionally waking & moving when a wave disturbed their slumber.  The way they move on the rocks is interesting & looks awkward, though it is effective.  We finally got to the arch, down the boardwalk & many steps, it is an arch cut by the action of wind, waves & water through the limestone rock.  Eventually it will collapse & create a new island, not in my lifetime though.  The timber work of the viewing platform has really been worn by the force of the wind & water roaring through the arch, it is amazing the type of wear on the timber where it is exposed.  Where it is not exposed there is no weathering.  We spent ages viewing the seals antics through the archway, we could have stayed a lot longer, they are so interesting to watch.

Next stop was Weirs Cove, the site of the supply landing place for the lighthouse before a road was built.  There were steps cut into the limestone cliff for men to carry the supplies from the lighter in the sheltered cove up the cliff to the storehouse.  The supply ship came every 3 months & in those days the power for the light was kerosene, so a lot of very hard work carrying the supplies up.  After a number of years a flying fox was built to aid in carrying supplies & people up the cliff face from a small jetty a long way below, still a lot of hard work.

In the distance we could see the stark granite dome that is the site of the Remarkable Rocks, our next destination.  When we got there, we could see why they were called Remarkable Rocks, they really are remarkable.  These granite rocks are sitting on top of a granite dome that forms a headland, they are really huge & shaped into some extraordinary shapes by the action of wind, water, salt & erosion.  The geologists say that this process has been going on for 500 million years at this location.  It is also remarkable to see streambeds cut into the granite from where water flows off the top of the dome.  I can’t imagine the countless years it must have taken for water alone to cause erosion on the bare granite to that extent, it is really pronounced.  We had a lot of fun posing photographs with all the unusual rock shapes & again we spent a lot longer than we expected at the Remarkable Rocks.

It was getting late afternoon so we headed back to the visitor centre café for a late lunch, then back to camp.  We walked the Koala Walk at the caravan park, but didn’t see any koalas.  We also did the Lagoon Walk again, even prettier than yesterday now it was sunny with lots of kangaroos & Tammer wallabies, some of them had the cutest little baby Joeys peeping out of their mum’s pouches.  After dinner I did the Koala Walk at night with my head torch & saw two koalas, one asleep & one feeding, plus a small possum & two large possums.  There are lots & lots of Tammer wallabies out feeding at night, I am nearly tripping over them. We had another great day.