Sunday 6 February

- February 06, 2022

Today we had a full day touring privately with Exceptional Kangaroo Island. A tour which has an "access all areas" pass, we discovered. We were taken to wildlife preservation areas not accessible to the general public. We learned about the endangered glossy black cockatoos, one of many highlights of the morning.

Despite the massive publicity around them during the fires, the population of koalas on the island is actually doing very nicely. The fires were probably a blessing to maintain a sustainable population here.

A pair of Glossy Black Cockatoos

The only koala we saw on the island.

We were also taken through the Western River Refuge where conservationists are making good in roads into eradicating cats to help the endangered Kangaroo Island Dunnarts, a tiny marsupial only found on KI.

The cat proof fence - can't get in and can't get out. There are traps of various kinds inside the fence to eradicate the cats.

Goannas have trouble coming to terms with the fence

Driving through this refuge, we learned a lot about conservation projects here and how the fires have both helped and damaged local wildlife and flora. There are large stands of burned timber forests on the island. A decision has yet to be made on how this timber will be managed as, although there were plantations created, there was no plan in place to remove the harvested timber from the island!

It was amazing to see the work put in by volunteers to create this safe environment. There is hope.

Temporary shelter while the land recovers

We drove down from the top of that hill. Michael negotiated the rugged terrain very well on a very narrow track

Grass trees are amazing. As with so much of our flora, they rely on fire to regenerate. Those on the left were not burned. Those on the right were. They only throw up a flower spike after they have been burned.

As a matter of record, this is how many are living, both here on Kangaroo Island and in many parts of Eastern Australia, after the 2019/2020 bush fires. Rehousing/rebuilding is slow.

We are very grateful to Craig (and his wife Janet) for taking us on this adventure. We left this refuge well behind schedule - there was still more to see. Kangaroo Island is very large and we had yet to drive down to the westernmost end of the island, to see some of the features the island is actually famous for and "must sees" if you visit.

Michael was driving us today as Craig was actually not well. He had come along for this morning to take us through the two reserves we visited. It was now on to Flinders Chase for a late lunch and to see the Remarkables and Admiral's Arch. A side show to what we had done and learned about during the morning in regard to wildlife conservation and post bush fire recovery.