Goodbye Great Ocean Road and Hello Kangaroo Island

In the last two days, we have driven from one attraction to another on the Great Ocean Road. I started on the wrong side of the road, but quickly realized my mistake after the first curve, luckily without any accidents.

Undoubtedly, the most beautiful attractions we found were the 12 Apostles and the London Bridge. But we also visited the second oldest lighthouse in Australia, the Cape Otway Lighthouse, the Arch, Loch Ard Gorge, the Petrified Forest, and the Blowholes along our way. The hollow stumps of the petrified forest are limestone weathering formations that have formed over millions of years due to erosion and rain.

While driving, Bine spotted our first koala 🐨 in the eucalyptus trees by the roadside. In the evening, after sunset, we drove between kangaroos on both sides of the road behind a road train, which protected us from a collision with these jumpers. We stayed overnight in Nelson.

The next day was all about moving forward. After a short detour to the Blue Lake in Mount Gambier, which changes its color from blue to green every November, we quickly headed towards Cape Jervis. A friendly highway officer on his motorcycle with a built-in laser found that we were going too fast. Luckily, going 122km/h in a 110km/h zone only resulted in a warning.

About an hour before departure, we arrived at the ferry to Kangaroo Island and it started to rain. Upon arriving in Penneshaw, twilight was just beginning, the best time to observe Australian little penguins. So we signed up for a guided tour at the penguin center. We followed the ranger for an hour, trying to spot 3 or 4 barely visible little penguins. Then we had another hour to drive to Kingscote before finally being able to go to bed around 10pm.

Today, we took a big island tour, the first stop was at the Wildlife Park. Here, we could observe many animals that live here. Of course, the highlight was holding a koala on our arms. Bine also had a lot of fun feeding the kangaroos, until one of them had enough of her jokes and made a short move towards her.

Then we continued to Admirals Arch. Besides the black rock arch, we also saw New Zealand fur seals playing and sunbathing there.

On the way back to Kingscote, we made a detour to a farm where Ligurian bees, which were brought here by immigrants in the 19th century and can only be found here, produced delicious eucalyptus and other floral honey. We bought a few jars of honey to take with us.

Back in Kingscote, we hurried to watch the Pelican Feeding at 5pm. It was a spectacular show, where John 'pelican man' Ayliffe fed the pelicans, who were already waiting for the timely feeding, with fish scraps and shared interesting facts about Australian pelicans.