Victor Harbour and Monarto Zoo

Oohhh Victor Harbor, land of Adelaide schoolies (!!???), how sad we are that we couldn’t enjoy you more.  The weather was truly abysmal here, blustery and wet.  We did try to be brave and venture out but golly it was miserable at a mere 12 degrees!  During the worst of the wet we walked / rode bikes to the amazing Whale Centre, a terrific display of whaling history and biology. A preserved skull of a whale was awesome to see (and smell!).

The museum also had much in the way of info and interactive displays regarding the maritime history of the area.

From there, we had lunch and then caught the horse-drawn cart across the bridge to Granite Island to see the penguins.

Sadly, the number of penguins in the wild have declined considerably since Rich and Kel visited ten years ago.  On the other hand, the seals are apparently doing quite well.

The lady at the Penguin centre had been there for a quite a while and had a very funny relationship with each of the penguins she was looking after. She basically treated and spoke to them as if they were her own grandchildren. She was saddened by the realisation that there are hardly any left anymore.

We spent some time exploring Granite Island and waiting in the sun for the horse and cart ride back to the mainland.

The next day we just hung around at the caravan park. The kids momentarily lost their sanity and went for a swim in the caravan park pool.  It was okay in the pool, but getting out was another matter!  Rich headed into town on a mission to track down a new surfboard to replace the one he broke in Margaret River.

That was pretty much it for Victor Harbor.  It is such a lovely little town but we were mostly beaten back by the weather, sad L. 

We left Victor Harbour the next day and took the coast road around some of the touristy towns further east and then headed north toward Monarto. After a pretty relaxed drive through the countryside we eventually showed up to the Monarto Zoo – basically a kind of safari park where the animals roam around in their huge, paddock sized enclosures while the zoo bus drives through the enclosures so that you can get real close to the animals.

It was a hot day, but we enjoyed seeing the various animals in an environment that was as close to their real environment as you could get in Australia.

One of the highlights was watching the chimpanzees going crazy and having a bit of a brawl – Planet of the Apes style, followed by them being given some food and suddenly going real quiet (Prozac anyone?).

Hopping over to Kangaroo Island for a few days

The next day we said goodbye to Adelaide and drove down to Cape Jervis to catch our ferry (caravan and all) to Kangaroo Island.

We arrived a little early so soaked up the time by forcing the kids to do some school work at the windy lookout overlooking the ferry port.

When the time came, we drove down to the ferry, booked in and backed the car and caravan into the ferry. Rich made this look pretty easy – but had a lot of help from the ferry staff. The ferry ride was pretty rough and rocky due to the waves whipped up by the wind, and the kids enjoyed seeing their toy cars rolling back and forth on the table that we were seated at. Kel was sitting white knuckled and trying to look as calm as possible – probably due to previous bad ferry experiences experienced in Africa and Greece.

Arriving on Kangaroo Island pretty late, we stayed in the dodgy looking campground near the ferry port in Penneshaw but somewhat protected from the wind.

Next morning we took off relatively early after a quick chat to the campground manager who gave us some good tips about the island. We headed to the town of Kingscote where we had a wander and a play in the park before venturing into the town centre, checking out some of the shops and eating a delicious lunch while soaking up the lazy and relaxed atmosphere.

We then drove around the top end of the island stopping off at Parndana to watch the annual sheep shearing contest getting underway with all manner of rough and ready looking shearers limbering up and checking out their opposition and recounting how drunk they got at the after-party at last year’s sheep shearing contest. We watched a few of the rounds and were impressed by the skill and speed of the contestants and left certain that the Parndana pub would be pretty full-on that night.

We continued around top of the island and circled around to the south side where our campsite was situated – wow what a beautiful spot (and wow – it’s for sale!). The campsite was huge but very sparsely populated – so we found a great spot away from the other campers and began the process of setting up for a few days, going the whole hog and getting the annexe out (for the first time on the trip). The campsite was full of kangaroos and several very noisy koalas.

Boxing practise

We took a dirt road through the middle of the island and headed to Stokes Bay where we visited a small cafe before heading over to Paul’s Place.

WOW! Paul’s Place = crazy, weird, out there, full-on, (+ animal abuse?).

We’d heard about this place from an ad in the visitor’s guide and from this it appeared from the ad that Paul had been running this place for many years from a love of animals and that the animals kept there were rescued animals from accidents or other misadventures.

We rolled up and entered the gate and the first thing we saw was Paul holding a large kangaroo in his arms like a baby and handing it to one of the many tourists. Enough said. We then noticed that the yard we were in contained sheep, goats, kangaroos, a sheep dog, a turkey, some chickens, a pig. The kids enjoyed patting them for a while, and then suddenly Paul appeared from nowhere and started handing people bags of food. The bizarre mixture of animals began positioning for the food.

This went on for a little while before we were moved on to a different yard, where again we were greeted by a strange collection of animals waiting at the gate like emus, kangaroos, more turkeys, more chickens, a deer (WTF?), the sheep dog again. Paul disappeared and suddenly appeared again a minute or two later and tried to hand Kel a bucket of food, but she wasn’t having a bar of it. Paul then gave the bucket to a tourist - and this was on! The vast assortment of animlas went berzerk and basically attacked this poor guy. Rich was laughing hysterically, and the kids were watching on enjoying themselves and feeding animals when given the chance.

Paul again moved us on to a different yard, this time a little more sedate where people lined up to cuddle and get a photo opportunity with a poor koala trying to score a midday nap, while others of us were handling snakes, lizards and possums a few metres away.

After 15 minutes of this and Paul rushing around making sure everybody was holding, petting or feeding an animal, he called everyone over to a spot in the yard and then grinned and said, “Right, now it’s time for one of you to die”. He then called out a French tourist and pushed him back onto a fence. Before the French tourist had a chance to do anything, Paul reached into his feed bag and threw feed on the tourist’s head. Suddenly 4 or 5 emu heads popped over the fence and started pecking away at this guy’s head. The other emus in the yard also ran over and started pecking away.

After this event, Paul called for volunteers to come up for the same treatment – surprisingly there were no takers. He then looks at the kids and said “What about ya dad?” – then kids excitedly agreed and pushed their way to back of the crowd of onlookers to grab the hands of Rich who was desperately trying to blend into the crowd / hide behind a small tree. The kids dragged Rich to the front and Rich suffered the same treatment as the French tourist.

But it didn’t end there – we were moved on to a big bird cage where we fed and handled birds while Kel got attacked by a kangaroo outside.

We then moved onto another yard where we got to feed a baby sheep, handle lizards, handle a python, and watch what happens when a baby sheep sucks the tail of a python (what happens is the python swings its head around and bites the lip of the baby sheep – causing, to the horror of all the onlookers, the baby sheep to bleat loudly and start bleeding all over the place).

After all this we thought it must end here – but no – suddenly Paul appeared again, this time dragging a small pony along – he looked at Ari and said, “Would you like a pony ride?”. Kel had had enough by this point so we thanked Paul and gave our apologies for not seeing the rest of the show and slunk away to the car and headed back to camp. Far out – that was a strange couple of hours – but Rich and kids enjoyed it.

The next day we headed out to Seal Bay to check out the sea lion colony. The poor people can head out to a lookout overlooking the beach – but if you pay a bit more – you can head down to the beach escorted by a parks officer and get up pretty close while listening to the parks officer talk about the sea lion colony. We watched and listened for an hour or so, and enjoyed watching the sea lions surfing into the beach after a swim, and the arguments they would have with each other when trying to find a good spot on the beach.

As we were heading off, one inquisitive sea lion started moving up behind Dylan who was very focused and investigating a pile of sea lion poo. It was OK and Dylan made it back alive... Just.

On the way back to camp, we stopped off at Little Sahara and wandered up to the sand dunes where we had a few goes sandboarding down them, and watching the tour groups take themselves out on the dunes. This was good fun, but exhausting walking back up the dunes – definitely needs some chairlifts.

On our third day we took a drive back up to the north side of the island and checked out a couple of desolate beaches before heading over to the Cape Borda lighthouse, where we went on a tour of the lighthouse and surrounds which ended with a bang.

Ready?

BOOM!!!

The lighthouse man also told us that he was impressed by the way kids had behaved on his tour so we left there two pretty proud parents.

From there we drove off road back to the Flinders Chase National Park on the south side of the island and started by checking out the platypus enclosure, where, after 30 minutes or so of patiently staring at an unchanging section of the river we decided that we should be off to avoid the storm rolling in. On the way back to the car, a man that had been quietly waiting spot platypuses (or is that platypi?!?) exclaimed to Kel that he was very impressed by the way the kids had behaved while looking for platypi. So for the second time that day we left the area as two very proud parents.

"See any playtypus?" "Nope"

We drove to the end of the national park where the famous Admiral’s Arch and seal colony was situated as the clouds began to roll in. This section of the island was very cool, with a lot of water moving around and the stormy vista making things look pretty bleak. We got the standard photo under Admiral’s Arch, and then went and checked out the Weir Cliffs where boats use to dock and supply the local lighthouse up a 200m ‘chute’ cut into the cliff. We could see the Remarkable Rocks from here – far around the bay – but the weather was starting to close in and we were sad that we were going to visit the Remarkable Rocks in the rain.

By the time we had driven around the bay to the Remarkable Rocks, the rain had been replaced with sun and a rainbow, so we were able to enjoy this cool part of the island and thoroughly explore the granite rocks before heading back for dinner.

The next day was our final day on the island, but the ferry wasn’t to leave until 4pm or so, so after packing up and heading off we visited a Eucalyptus farm and then a Honey farm where we bought many honey based treats and some mead which tasted great – a bit like a desert wine with a honeyish aftertaste.

It was raining pretty heavily and we ended up trying to head up a pot holed and slippery road to a winery / restaurant for lunch, but were turned away due to them having closed the kitchen by the time we got there, so settled for a yummy meal in a cafe near the ferry port.

Rich again backed the caravan successfully onto the ferry and we enjoyed a much more sedate ride back to the mainland. From the port we drove for an hour or so to Victor Harbour, Rich freaking out due to the petrol tank showing empty almost all of the way there (must have a good reserve), eventually getting to the caravan park and setting up around 6pm.