Day 33 – October 3 2012

Another magic day, sun beaming, totally blue cloudless sky with a slight breeze.  Our venture today was to Cape Borda, on the northwest tip of Kangaroo Island, with bitumen for half the distance & the other half, reasonably good dirt road.  We did see a black tiger snake, one of the most venomous snakes in the world, making its way across the road.  The skin on this tiger snake is so black & shiny it looks like a piece of bright plastic, its hard to believe an animal could have a skin that shiny.  The lighthouse at Cape Borda is unusual in that it is square & short, whereas most lighthouses are round & tall.  The Cape Borda lighthouse sits on a very high cliff, 155 metres above sea level, so the lighthouse itself only needs to be 10 metres tall, thus it is square because square costs less.  The Cape Borda lighthouse started operating in 1858.

Firstly we walked the Clifftop Hike, from the visitor centre down to the viewing platform on the edge of the cliff.  It is certainly a very long way down, though the view is fantastic, today we could see the coastline of the Yorke Peninsula on the mainland plus a few islands around 40km away.  Next we took the Guided Tour hosted by Mick, the very flamboyant & colourful ranger living in one of the lighthouse keeper’s cottages & caring for this part of the park.  Mick took us through the small museum, explained & showed the history of the different types of lights used over the years in the lighthouse then took us into the lighthouse & showed us the revolving lens of the lighthouse plus explained a little more history around the shipwrecks & the lives lost, plus the hardships suffered by the early lighthouse keepers & their families.  The highlight of the tour was the 1 o’clock time signal fired by the cannon.  This cannon is the original cannon that has been used over the years to signal the time at 1pm & is extremely loud.  Mick was very entertaining & I would recommend this tour to anyone.  He mentioned that on Friday during the severe wind he recorded a gust of 64 knots, which is 118.5 kilometres/hour.

After our entertaining tour we started heading back & stopped at the lookout at Scott Cove, the view from here is stunning looking east along the coast.  Our next stop a short distance along was the lighthouse cemetery, a very poignant reminder of how tough life was in the early years of the lighthouse operation, with visits by the store ship only occurring every 3 months & no access to any medical facilities.

Our next stop was the campground at Harveys Return, a very pleasant spot under some beautiful gum trees where we sat & had lunch.  After lunch we ventured down the track of the Harveys Return Hike, originally used by the lighthouse keepers to haul stores from the small cove back to the lighthouse.  The first part of the track is OK, fairly eroded, but you can still see in places where cobblestones were put to make the road better for the horse & dray.  The second part of the track is pretty horrendous, this is very steep & is where the stores where hauled up from the cove at Harveys Return by capstan & horse using light rail carts.  The very steep track down is very eroded & a lot of hard work to get down & then back up.  There is not much remaining of the rail tracks, the crane, the engine house nor the storehouse. The huge seas that thrash the coastline at times have washed most of it away. The last part of this steep hill was too much for me so I sat on a rock in the shade while Ron the mountain goat went down & took some photos for me to enjoy at leisure.  Whatever you take into a National Park you must take out & poor Ron would have had trouble to haul me out of there.

On our way back to camp we saw an echidna crossing the road, the first we have seen on Kangaroo Island, they are smaller than the mainland echidnas, though just as prickly & cute.  We walked the Koala Track in daylight once back at camp but didn’t spot any koalas, lots of Tammer wallabies though.