My Valentine Was A Penguin

Last tour before starting school - am happysad. 

We started off in Adelaide - which seems to be a bit of a forgotten city ("You're going to Adelaide? Why?") in the grand scheme of Australian things. We landed on a Sunday and immediately went out for a walk around town, hoping to find a restaurant or grocery or the like.

And it was deserted. 

I'm talking Stephen King's "The Stand", where everyone on earth dies from some sort of alien thinger except for a dozen people that were on a plane and mysteriously survived (and landed the plane? illogical) and I think won in the end. Or maybe got eaten by aliens.

Kangaroo Island

But yeah, back to Adelaide - the deserted city. Apparently these guys take their Sundays very very seriously. And with multiple beaches within a half-hour drive of the city, who wouldn't? We finally came across the place where they hid all the people - Rundle St. Mall, full of buskers and shops and with a small carnival of freaks (no, really, they called themselves that) at the north end. Ended our day in the Adelaide Botanical Gardens. Apparently every major Australian city has botanical gardens, but I have to say Adelaide's are the best - massive garden of succulents, lots of shady trees for reading, and minimal crazy wildlife. 

The next morning, at lovely 6:15 a.m., we headed off to Kangaroo Island. KI is Australia's second-largest island, behind Melville Island (don't worry, no one else has heard of it either). It was named by an Englishman named Matthew Flinders in honour of - no joke here - the kangaroos that he ate for dinner when he landed on the island. To honour their memory. He then proceeded to name the rest of the island after himself - except I don't think he had to get eaten to do it.

Kangaroo Island has got a massive population of wallabies (so many that they have to kill them off, apparently, which sucks for the wallabies...), koalas (they had to sterilize a bunch of them to stop them from taking over - those buggers were eating all the trees!), and seals and sea lions.

What's the difference, you ask? (I did. So don't be ashamed.) The New Zealand seals have proper fur - so they don't get wet. They just looooved to bask in the sun and generally laze around. And they're not only from New Zealand - they just happened to be spotted there first. Australian sea lions, on the other hand, have hair rather than fur. We got to walk along the beach amongst them, as they're no longer afraid of humans. (Although if they knew what we were doing to their environment, I'm sure they'd change their tune.) Just to confuse you, Australian sea lions are also found in New Zealand. 

 We also saw the Remarkable Rocks - can you guess the origin of their name? I expect Mr. Flinders said "they're remarkable!" and someone wrote it down, thinking he'd named them, but it was an accident because he wanted to call it Flinders' Rocks and he was really bummed that he only had 20 things named after him instead of 21. That's my guess. But yeah, they're remarkable. And, um, rocks.

Saw a 'Bird of Prey' show - got to hold an owl in my lap (super soft). Did not get to hold the eagle, despite me telling them that I've held bigger birds as a kid (no joke - a hawk or something like that). But probably a good idea as I value my skin and eyeballs. And life.

Tried sandboarding down Little Sahara (the sit-down kind), but I have to say I'm still more of a fan of tobogganing - sand just doesn't allow for speeding the same way a sheet of ice does :), plus the walk up the sand dune is enough to break anyone.

A final highlight of Kangaroo Island was the Little Penguins viewing session (wildlife, not wine). Our guide was whinging about the lack of penguins, and hemmed and hawed about their "molting season" meaning they would be hiding on account of not being waterproof, but due to my magical powers of persuasion (I offered to buy many cases of their wine), we saw TWO little penguins hiding in the shoreline on Valentine's Day night. I'm sure they were offended by our interruption, but at least we brought them some red spotlights to get them in the mood. And also to not blind them, which is helpful.