Week 6 - Monday 8 – 14 February 2010

So, having endured a lot of rain, cold and general hardship (you're feeling sorry for us, aren't you?) we found a great deal online and decided to avoid more rain by holing ourselves up in a hotel room at the McCracken Country Club. More than anything we thought it would be amusing to turn up in Priscilla, covered in dust and a bit weather warn, to ask for the room we'd booked. As it turned out it was a large,empty, soul-less conference type place, and no one paid us much attention at all. The room was lovely though – comfy bed, hot showers, porcelain and, importantly, satellite TV! We spent the afternoon watching The Matrix (forgotten what a good film it was, even though I can't bear Keanu Reeves) then watched the United v Everton game live until the early hours (of all the games to manage to catch!)

Next day, and your intrepid travellers headed off for the elusive 1pm ferry to Kangaroo Island. By elusive, what I really mean is, non-existent... Having rushed down to Cape Jervis for said 1pm, we discovered the next ferry was at 4pm, and there wasn't room on that one, but we could get the 6pm if we'd like. Oh dear. So we signed up for the 6pm, with a standby slot on the 4pm. We spent the intervening hours looking for a Vodafone signal so we could make some calls to sort some accommodation and chores out in Adelaide (including a service for Priscilla), then rushed back for 3.30pm to see if we could improve our standby status. The staff on the ferry do a really amazing job of squeezing every last inch of space out the ferry. People were guided to within millimetres of other vehicles, and at one point they were considering putting a block of wood between the ramp which lifts up to form the back plate of the ferry and the wall of the ferry to ensure the nose of a Corolla wasn't squashed. It was pretty impressive. Anyway, good news for us was that we made it onto the 4pm (even if it didn't leave until around 5pm with all the shenanigans). The crossing was good, and I spotted a seal on route, so all looking pretty good.

Arriving at Kangaroo Island, refreshed from our stay in the hotel, we were of course ready for a night of camping. We headed to American River, which we hoped would be sheltered from the winds, only to discover it was very exposed. And windy. And cold. So, well, yes. We caved again, this time paying more money than we paid for our night in the lovely McCracken for a night in a 1950's throw-back below average motel room, complete with op-shop furniture (although the people running the place were lovely).

On Wednesday we headed across the north side of the island and realised the reason for Kangaroo Island's name – we saw few live animals, but lost count of the dead roos and wallabies we saw lining the roads. Not nice. Had a nice lunch stop at Stokes Beach (which you have to clamber through a rocky tunnel to reach), and then camped for FREE and ALONE at Harveys Return. It was a lovely little spot, and I managed to sleep most of the night without worrying about the Axe Murderers.

At this point in time, we weren't feeling overly impressed with Kangaroo Island. It costs a lot of money to get there, and we hadn't by then seen much of the wildlife (other than the aforementioned dead roos) or stunning scenery (don't get me wrong, it was all very nice, but most of Australia is very nice) the island is famed for. I guess the crux of it came down to that great old British obsession – the weather. The weather was (in Jen's words) a bit poo.

Thursday though was great.

In the morning we carried on along the North coast track from our camp to the Cape Borda lighthouse at the north-west corner of the island,



then followed the red corrugated roads down through the west end of the island to Rocky River, the entry point for the Flinders Chase National Park.

From here, we headed down to the Cape de Couedic lighthouse, at the south-west end of the island,



and its neighbour Admiral's Arch. We spent a long time at the rock arch watching the New Zealand fur seals playing, fighting, sleeping, weeing in the water and generally frolicking about – great spot.





Then we headed onto the Remarkable Rocks, which were indeed, remarkable. Jen's correcting me to say they were Quite Remarkable, but I think they were just Remarkable.







Finally, we camped up that night at a council camp ground at Vivone Bay, where we also bought some fuel at a whacking $1.79 per litre (of course I limited the purchase to $10 at this price). We made friends with our neighbours, who we shared our first camp fire with since the Victorian High Country. They even cooked and fed us a Beer Damper – gorgeous with fresh cream and jam!

On Friday, we drove out for a great view from Point Ellen near where we'd camped, before heading over to Seal Bay.



We did the self-guided tour, rather than paying $28 each to get onto the beach with a ranger, and saw the Australian Sea-lions lounging about on the beach. All very cute, but not nearly as active as their Kiwi counterparts the day before. The Australian Sea-lions go out fishing for 72 hours, then come back and sleep for 72 hours. Then we made the run back to the ferry, discovering on route that my fuel calculations were a bit too close for comfort. We made it to American River to refuel on tightly nipped buttocks and hot air. A deep sigh of relief was breathed by both of us, but mostly by me, who would have had hell to pay if we'd gotten stuck on the dirt roads beforehand....

The ferry back to the mainland was much less eventful than the journey there, and we were in Adelaide by 5pm. There we set up camp in Semaphore, and met up with Jen's internet friend Schlocky, real name Frank. The second of her internet Axe Murderers I've met. Frank turned out to be as lovely as Cheryl, and insisted on paying for our dinner out at the Palais on the Semaphore beach front. All very nice. And, we weren't murdered (although even Jen confessed to being a little concerned when he took the wrong route back to our camp site past what looked like a disused railway line)...

Saturday was a cultural tour of Adelaide, taking in the North Terrace, the museum (very good) and a drink at the Arts Centre before heading to the Fringe Festival in the park, where we caught a comedy show called “The Book of Moron”. No, I wasn't starring. It was a good night though, apart from missing the “Sky Show” (an awful lot of fireworks – Jen was itching to get up and walk out of the small theatre to go and watch for the last 15 minutes). It was the Clipsal 500 race in Adelaide that weekend, as well as the close of the Fringe (comedy) Festival, and the Adelaide Festival of the Arts, so it was as busy as Adelaide gets.





The city kindly laid on free buses to shuttle everyone home. We waited for an hour and a half for ours, but it didn't show. So our free bus became an expensive taxi, hohum.

We planned to head into Adelaide for more culture the next day, but decided to collapse and do very little instead. Well, there was no real decision – these things tend to happen to us! In the late afternoon we walked up to Semaphore again and had a drink in the local pub, before an average Thai meal and another (much cheaper) taxi home.

Ok, enough for now, I know we're behind, but we'll catch up eventually....

Hope everyone's well!

Claire, of Jen and Claire Fame.