Monday 7 February

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A slow start this morning, but still with plans for a busy day. Our stay at Kingscote was over. We checked out of our hotel and headed for Emu Bay. Originally I also had Bay of Shoals and Boxing Bay to visit on the way, but after advice from locals decided not to. Overkill!

Emu Bay is just lovely. Would consider targeting it as an alternative to Kingscote as a place to stay. Beautiful beach and only 15 mins from Kingscote. We walked along the beach, which was very comfortable as the sand is very hard. 




Then it was off to the Lavender Farm. Gosh! I'm so glad we ordered one of the famous lavender scones to share! 

The lavender scone was huge!

There are a lot of salt pans on the island

Lots of Fairy Wrens around the lavender


We took the long route to another north shore beach to keep to sealed roads as much as possible. Stokes Bay is famous for two things: the Rockpool Cafe (great seafood, apparently), and the means by which you get to the beach! The cafe was closed, sadly, but not so the beach access - through a tunnel in the cliffs! It's very narrow at one point so don't carry too much baggage with you. 😜 


This would have been our view from the Rockpool Cafe if it had been open




On the other side this beautiful calm pool, protected by a natural rocky outcrop 

From Stokes Bay we had lunch (on recommendation) at the bakery in Parndarna. Pretty good. It was here that we saw a map posted of the extent of the bush fires

A stark reminder of the enormity of the fires

Then we again took a long route to get to the Emu Ridge Eucalyptus Distillery and on to Clifford's Honey Farm. Both worth visiting. By the way, the Ligurian bees and koalas on the island are doing just fine! 



While eating ice cream at Cliffords Honey Farm, I spent a lot of time trying to photograph the birds. So many different varieties. So few captured.

The silver eye was quite cooperative

This immature Crescent Honeyeater was not so cooperative

A mature Crescent Honeyeater - constantly on the move! My camera can't cope!

We now have three nights staying in Penneshaw. After checking in to the hotel. We went for a walk. Penneshaw is very small. There's a local fairy penguin colony just across the road from the hotel. We weren't prepared to venture out after dark to try our luck. The sun sets a lot later here and they come in well after darkness has set in. I did manage to capture a sunset.

Lots of Wrens here too. This is a female Superb Blue Wren

Stairs down to the penguin colony



More adventures tomorrow.


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