Kangaroo Island!!!

For our July Holiday, our adventurous growing family took a fantastic trip to a place called Kangaroo Island, in South Australia (south of Adelaide). This is a long blog as there are many pictures but they are well worth a good look. Kangaroo Island, or KI as the locals call it, is a place that has been untouched by modern culture and tourism. It was a beautiful little piece of Australia and we feel so blessed to have been able to experience it.

A picture of us in Kingscote, on the northeast side of the island, over looking The Bay of Shoals and the larger body of water it connects to, called the Backstairs Passage.

Welcome to Kangaroo Island!!

After a super lunch of fish and chips at Roger's Deli, we drove down the road to a famous local hotspot called the Island Beehive. KI is home to a bee that is only found on the Island and they take enormous pride in their honey and honey/bee products. We tasted Honeycomb ice cream, honey chocolate and scones with honey and cream. This would be a place we would visit each day on our trip!! YUMMMM!!!

After our snack, we set out for the Parndana Wildlife Preserve. Much more than a Zoo, this place was a refuge for animals. We got to feed Kangaroos again (never gets old) and these Roos were the most sweet and loveable creatures that we have ever seen! Lily was able to give one a hug, Emma hopped with them across the field and a very sweet one gave Jana a kiss! We saw an orphaned Joey, kookaburras, cockatoos, wallabies, birds, ducks, and more. It was a great way to start our KI adventure! For dinner we had some local pizza and wine and afterwards, Emma and John splashed around the hotel pool. As Emma says, it's not a vacation unless you get to swim!

Day two started off a bit cloudy and cold (it is winter, I know....). We bundled up and headed for the Southwest corner of the KI, Flinders Chase National Park. We started out with what should have been a Lighthouse visit, followed by a walk down to a seal lookout, then a rock formation called the Admiral's Arch. Well, the Lighthouse was amazing, but the wind was whipping. We got as far as the seal lookout, when the sky opened up.....

We were drenched! Cold and wet and 10:30am and all we could do was laugh!! It was a very exciting and chilly way to start our day, but we were determined to brave the elements and see this magical place!! (and believe me, we BRAVED the elements!)

Here are the girls after we ran back to the car - notice how soaked Emma's coat is! Lily looks like, "Are you kidding me?"

Well, as island weather goes, the sky cleared after lunch and we began our fun day of exploring this little's many treasures. This next picture is of The Remarkable Rocks - hard to tell, but these rocks are enormous and Emma and Lily loved running into the "caves" that the bigs ones made. It was very windy - John had to hold tight to Lily!!!

Next stop, back to Admiral's Arch. Lily wanted no part of getting out into that weather again, so I stayed in the car with the little girls. John took Emma, a.k.a the human kite, on a 10 minute walk down a boardwalk with no railing, all the way to the arch. It was so windy, her hat wouldn't stay on her head!!! You should have seen her when they got back. I had a chance to get down there too! It was truly beautiful - the pictures don't really do it justice at all. All around the arch, fur seals were playing and lounging around on the rocks - it was surreal!! The wind made the waves to crash mightily on the rocky coast line and it was breathtaking (literally and figuratively!). Wow, we have a mighty God!!

God was certainly a giant source of blessing on our journey! The rainbow below is just one of about 8 or 9 that we spotted during our time on the island. What a fantastic and real way that we could remind each other how much God loves us - I was tickled! I took a picture of 5 of them and then John wouldn't let me pull over anymore ;-)

One evening, Emma and I took a very special "big girl" tour. KI is home to the smallest penguin in the world, the Little Penguin, or Fairy Penguin. Talk about AWESOME!!! Emma and I got to take a look at them in the natural habitat on the rocks using a fancy ultraviolet red light. They are only on the rocks at night, so John was gracious enough to let Emma and I have all the fun, while he stayed home with the little girls. We were able to hear them sing to each other and we saw lots of Mommas and babies too!! To top off our night, as we looked up into the amazing starlit sky, we could see the Milky Way - WOW!! What a fun thing to share with Emma!!!

Day three was Seal Bay, on the southern shore of the Island, looking out into the Southern Ocean. This is not a zoo, or a preserve. We actually got to walk a boardwalk and pass the seals, or Australian Sea Lions (their proper name), just sunning themselves on the walk way!! We came within 10 feet of a few and it was so incredibly cool!! Another windy day, though and Lily wasn't really to happy to be carried...but she couldn't even walk it was so windy!! Jana was very brave through it all - she just slept, it was her only defense ;-). We spent some time on the beach, watching the seals play in the water and ride the waves onto the beach. An experience that we will not soon forget!

Next stop, the Little Saharra. A giant sand dune in the middle of the island! John, Emma and Lily climbed all the way up to the top!!! Jana stayed behind for a "snack" - not sure that Jana and I would have made it up anyway. John was hurting by the time he got back and the girls loved being so high up "in the air".

We left Kangaroo Island and headed for Adelaide for the day. We played at a fun park, had lunch on a pirate ship and played on the beach looking out over the Investigator Straits. We collected a few rocks and shells and took in the sunset.

It was a perfect family getaway. What a blessing to be able to see this beautiful little hidden treasure and see God's beauty in it's truest form!!!

For more Kangaroo Island Pictures click on:

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