Day 182 Kangaroo Island Flinders Chase National Park

After exploring the first half of Kangaroo Island it is now time to get to know the other part of the island. Before leaving Kingscote we decided to join the big market day at the Kingscote Gin Distillery. Stuart thought it was a great lunch with a Gin Tasting Board and some mushroom pizza. For desert Stuart had to try the rolled gelato on offer and was happy with the Nutella selection.

From the Kingscote Distillery we drove at first to our next accommodation, the Kangaroo Island Caravan Park. At this campground there are still some big eucalyptus trees and surprisingly many accommodations and amenities survived the bushfires in January 2020. So with this, the campground is liked by the local Koalas, so while we were moving in, Stuart discovered a mum with a joey sitting pretty low in a re-growing eucalyptus tree, hidden by the many leaves. After saying hello to the koala and the joey, we left them again to let them sleep and rest.

We were heading off to the Flinders Chase National Park, which is just around the corner of the campground. On the way, the Bunker Hill Lookout was a nice little stop on a hill to get an overview and you can still see where the fires went through almost three years ago by the dead trees in the middle. The first stop in the Flinders Chase National Park was the Admiral Arch. From here you can see the lighthouse, a small island in front of kangaroo island and walk down to the Admiral Arch. On the way to the arch you can hear, smell and then see them: sea lions playing at the rocks, fighting in the water or just playing together in the shallow waters of the Admiral Arch.

On the way to Remarkable Rocks, we saw a sign for Weirs Cove and decided to do the detour: it is a ruin with a lookout on a beach with blue water and white sand. To our surprise there was a shoal where seals were hunting, so moving the fish in the water and then splitting the shoal in three separate groups. At one point there was a shark swimming in, so the seals went back on the rocks and the split shoal regrouped. Although the water with the seal, shark and fish were far away it was easy to watch everything due to the light blue water. This was a pretty unexpected sight on the detour.

Last stop of the day in the Flinders Chase National Park were the Remarkable Rocks. Stuart has seen photos of these rocks, so he wanted to visit them. Luckily there were some from the wind more protected areas, so that Stuart was able to join us.

After visiting all these sights, it was beach time! We chose the beach at Cape Bouguer, which was pretty empty and nice for relaxing a while. It is not suitable for swimming, but with the water being icy, nobody was tempted to go for a swim anyway.

On the drive from the beach back to the campground, we stopped, as we thought there was a dead snake on the street. Well, as I walked closer the snake moved suddenly before disappearing into the bush. Well, not the preferred wildlife to see, but at least there was nobody hurt by this interaction.

Back at the campground, Stuart insisted to say hello to the Koala mum with the joey. Well the Koala mum had changed her position and was moving on to another tree, but by walking around looking for her we found many other koalas in the different trees. There was one koala boy sitting quite low in one tree, so he had a closer look at Stuart while eating the eucalyptus leaves. Stuart was so happy to see so many koalas, some with smaller, some with bigger joeys, hanging around in the trees, sleeping, eating some eucalyptus. In total there were about 20 koalas that evening around, so there is hope that there will be many koalas back at Kangaroo Island.