Kangaroo Island Odyssey
We have finished a remarkably good lunch and have come out on the cliff-top walk again, as it was so beautiful yesterday. The Muse has brought a book, recommended by an extraordinary American couple with whom we had dinner last night, another absolutely remarkable meal, by the way, and she is completely absorbed. This gives me a chance to tell you more about this remarkable place.
In New Zealand, we drove through the Remarkables, a stunning mountain range that I described earlier. One of the highlights of this morning's adventure here was a trip through Flinders Chase, a huge national park, that is home to amongst other things The Remarkable Rocks - and they really are. Here is your geology lesson for the day......granite is formed when molten lava cools very very slowly. Here at the extreme south-west corner of KI volcanic activity millions of years ago created a red hot rock pile thousands of metres higher than the land is today. In the centre of this rock pile sat what we see now - a huge granite dome. While it came into existence cooling slowly, the rock above it cooled relatively quickly, making it softer, more brittle and much more susceptible to erosion. Over time all the softer rock was eroded away. All that should be left here now is a smooth granite dome. However, the forces of the southern ocean, the actions of salt, wind and sea have sculpted this dome into a series of remarkable shapes, hence their current name - The Remarkable Rocks. More remarkable than New Zealand's Remarkables? You'll have to come and judge for yourself. What they certainly are is - remarkable!
And that's really how we are going to have to sum up our KI adventure. It has been remarkable! Thiis morning's excursion, as I said, took us to Flinders Chase. By the time we'd been out for half an hour we'd seen Kangaroos, Wallabies, more Koala Bears and more breath-taking rugged coastline and countryside. The sheer size and scale of this extraordinary landscape is hard to take in, let alone describe and absolutely impossible to photograph. The same must be said for our hotel or resort, neither term adequately defining the uniqueness of the place. Its location and setting are just so perfect. The huge Great Room that houses reception, the lounge and bar areas and the dining area is an enormous space with curved glass walls that look over the landscape and the ocean over a 270 degree arc and because this room is the highest part of the building the stunning views are unspoilt and uninterrupted. Yet walk less than 50 yards along the cliff-top as we have and the whole building has vanished.
From our bench half-way round the cliff walk, we can see perhaps 30 or 40 miles of rocky coastline, coves and inlets and white sand beaches. There is not another soul in sight. The only sign that anyone has ever been here is the bench on which we are sitting. This must have been how it looked to the English navigator and adventurer Matthew Flinders when he discovered Kangaroo Island in 1802 - apart from the bench of course. The island was actually part of South Australian until 9,000 years ago, when rIsing sea levels cut it off, creating what is today the 11 mile channel that separates it from the mainland.
The few aboriginal inhabitants at the time, having few if any maritime skills quickly got themselves back to the mainland and the island remained untouched and undiscovered by Europeans until Flinders' arrival. It was he who named the island. With his crew almost starving, Flinders came ashore amazed to find that the kangaroos had no fear of man. Having seen no humans for 500 generations and with no natural predators to worry about, the kangaroos had no fear of anything and were as curious about the newly arrived bi-peds as said bi-peds were pleased to see them. It isn't every day that your next fillet steak walks up to greet you before it's turned into lunch! Flinders and his crew killed and ate their fill and Matthew Flinders named the island after the animal that had in effect saved the lives of his crew.
