21 June 2025. Adelaide to Kingscote, Kangaroo Island to Southern Ocean Lodge (2.0) Our Celebration of Life!
We finished packing and were in an Uber a little after 8am.
In the Qantas Club by 8:40am. It’s the first time we have been in the newly revamped lounge. It’s very comfortable.
Our flight left from gate 50, who would have thought Adelaide airport would have a gate number that high!! We were on board by 9:30, and in the air at 9:40 in our Dash 8-400 prop driven aircraft. There were about 20-25 people on the flight. The couple in the seat in front of us were the pilot’s parents. It was the first time he had flown them on a commercial flight, and his mum’s birthday! Made for a memorable flight that was fun to share!
Our flight to Kingscote was brief, just 25 mins and enjoyable under clear blue skies on a brisk, winters morning. Great views out the window. Deb had a great time taking photos down the coast.
At the airport I put in a couple of strategic Ingress links, one to Troubridge Island and another to the Robe Obelisk. (Ingress Prime – look it up in your App Store, sign up for the Enlightenment J )
We were picked up by the friendly staff from Southern Ocean Lodge (SOL) and hit the road for our 50 min drive to the Lodge.
It’s 12 years and a devastating bushfire since we were last here. The Lodge was burnt to the ground in the fires and was totally rebuilt, bigger and better than before. They used the same architect who designed the original SOL, and it has the same look and feel as the original.
We arrived at SOL at around11:15, and were greeted with the customary glass of bubbles and our proposed itinerary for our stay, all the time taking in the magnificent views of the Southern Ocean through the huge glass windows. We have been told that a few humpback whales have been sighted in the bay in the last few days. Alas, there were no sightings during our stay.
We were shown to our room about 12:30, Room 2, almost the end of the accommodation wing. After we unpacked and took a breath, we went to lunch in the dining room. Afterwards we had tea/coffee outside looking down the rugged coast.
A bit later in the afternoon we talk a walk along a boardwalk to Hansen Bay. It was really fun walking along the beach taking in the surf and the bits and pieces washed up on the beach. On the way back we took a small detour to look over Penguin Cove. Such a beautiful part of the world.
We got back to our room around 5pm, and sat out on our deck. While we sat taking in the coastal view and the sound of the waves, a couple of kangaroos hopped by stopping every now and then for a bite to eat.
We went up for dinner around 7pm, and sat in front of the open fire in the main common area for a short time to soak up the atmosphere. Then strolled over to the dining area and found a quiet table away from everyone. We love a quiet table.
Dinner was very good (& the company excellent).
Our tours for tomorrow have been sorted, Seal Bay in the morning and Kangaroos & Koalas canapés late afternoon, think sunset.
When we got back to our room we turned all the lights out and went onto our deck and looked at the night sky. Such a clear, brisk night and so many stars, an amazing sight, the Milky Way, Southern Cross and so much more.
A great finish to our first day.
22 June 2025. Sunday Southern Ocean Lodge, Kangaroo Island
I counted our steps from our room to the top of the accommodation wing, 280! I guess it helps take a bit of the indulgence guilt away. We were up and down the hall many times each day, good job we enjoy walking home after dinner!
We woke at 7am and were up at breakfast around 7:45. Breakfast was generally very tasty, the spicy fruit toast left us both a bit confused.
Today was Seal Bay day. We left the Lodge at 8:30 for the 40 min drive to Seal Bay. Our driver /guide was Mark, from Birmingham, UK. A really nice guy and very good at his job. There were six of us on the tour, a couple from Adelaide and a young couple from Canada.
Kangaroo Island has been in drought for a long time, the same as most of South Australia, but the recent rains have given the pastures a good looking green tinge, but all the dry dams gave the real situation away!
We arrived at Seal Bay at 9:10, and after a short safety briefing, Mark took us down the boardwalk to the beach. On the way we had to give a couple of Australian Sea Lions a wide birth, they had taken up positions on the boardwalk to soak up a bit of sun. It was nice to get up close so soon on the tour. The Australian Seal Lions here have had around 90 pups this season, and most have survived so far. We were told that one of the nearest relative to the Australian Seal Lion is the American Grizzly Bear, an interesting, if not stretchy, “fact”. It was interesting watching the Sea Lions basking in the sun, surfing the waves into the beach and for some of the larger males, protecting their “harem” from others. It was all show today, no contests seen. We got loads of photos, I’m sure some will make to our FB pages “ soon”. The sea Lions feed well off shore from KI, feeding mainly on crayfish and crabs, they often stay out feeding for 3 to 4 days, never sleeping. Unfortunately, the waters off the southern coast of KI are home to large numbers of Great White Sharks, that happily feed on Sea Lions. The male sea lions tend to have darker coats than the much smaller females.
From there we headed back towards the Lodge, calling into Rainy Creek to have a look for Koalas. It was very successful, we saw around 8 koalas in a very small grove of eucalypts. We arrived back at the SOL at 11:30.
We had a bit of a rest and clean up before Lunch around 12:30.
We were booked in for the Kangaroo and Koalas tour later in the afternoon, but as the weather turned nasty with wind and rain the tour got cancelled. Around 4pm I went to the front desk to arrange for us to go on the tour tomorrow, as I trying to organise that the sun came out, there were blue skies overhead and within minutes the tour was back on again. I called Deb to let her know and headed back to our room to help with our stuff for the tour. We were back up at reception in no time and in the van with about 10 others for the tour.
The tour was at The Hansen Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, and our guide was Tom, a born and bred Kangaroo Islander. The sanctuary was established by Jim Geddes back in 1993 when 10,000 acres were bought for $1,000,000, a record at that time. All the fences of the old cattle station were taken down and the native animals were encouraged to settle in there . The bushfires of 2019 /2020 devastating the Sanctuary, many animals were lost, but the vegetation has made a strong comeback and the Sanctuary looks healthy. We saw a small herd of Western Grey Kangaroos, around 10 Koalas doing all sorts of Koala things from sleeping in the fork of trees, to climbing around the trees. It was really fun/interesting to watch. As we left it was quite dark, and there were lots of “shadowy” wallabies running around.
We arrived back at SOL at 6.20, we had a quick change and headed up for another tasty dinner before retiring for the night.
Tomorrow’s weather is going to be interesting, but not in a good way, wet with high winds and thunderstorms, and we are meant to be going to Remarkable Rocks, very exposed!
On Tuesday the forecast is for 6 to 7m swells, so the waves coming in to Hansen Bay should be pretty interesting.
At 10am this morning the news came out that the USA, under orders from President Donald Trump, they had bombed three sites within Iran, where Atomic weapons were reportedly being developed, using B-2 Stealth Bombers and “Bunker busting” bombs.
23 June 22025.Monday Southern Ocean Lodge, Kangaroo Island
We woke to rain, and our morning tour today was to Admirals Arch and Remarkable Rocks, possibly the most exposed part of KI.
We left the Lodge at around 9am, with Toby, a Londoner, our driver guide and one other guest, Mark, from WA.
Along the way we stopped when Toby saw a small flock of Cape Barren geese by the roadside. This species were becoming endangered on the mainland, so a small group was relocated to KI to help preserve them. They surprisingly established a viable community here. They are strongly protected on the island with huge fines for killing them (even accidentally running them over in your car) or hunting them, $15k & $100k respectively.
We got to see the regeneration of the island’s vegetation after the fires of 2019/2020, which burnt 2/3 of the island. It has been estimated that it will take about 10 years to fully regenerate, its already looking very good after 5 years.
Our first stop was at the Bunker Hill Lookout, it gave us a view of the landscape and how it was recovering. The snaky road to Admirals Arch was also clearly visible. There are lots of Yakka’s, native grass trees, in the area. They grow at about 1cm per year, that would make many of them in the area many 100’s of years old.
As we got close to Admirals Arch, the Cape Du Couedic Lighthouse became very prominent on the skyline, along with a less distinguishable, old white navigation post/pole, which was replaced for navigation by the lighthouse. There are two old houses at the lighthouse which were where, the families of the lighthouse, keepers lived.
We drove on down to the Admirals Arch. The weather was patchy at best, very windy and squalls of rain.
The sea was big, and the swells passing between the mainland and the Casuarina Islet, known locally as “The Brothers” just offshore were very impressive. We watched the swell smash into the coast and the islet for a while and then continued along the board walk to have a look at the fur seals that inhabit the rocks shelves and lower cliff areas.
There were some fur seals very close to the board walk, allowing for some great photos. It was interesting watching them do their thing.
We walked to the end of the boardwalk and the view under Admirals Arch. It’s a dramatic place to watch the seas, particularly in the weather we had. Waves crashing all around, in front of us. There was a mother and baby seal on the rock shelf under the Arch, the baby wasn’t keen to be left by itself, and quickly followed where its mother went. On our walk back up to our van, we saw a large kangaroo feeding just off the path. It had a chunk out of one of its ears, possibly due to a long gone fight. Apparently, it is unusual to see kangaroos in this area, there isn’t a lot of food for them.
From there we went to The Remarkable Rocks, calling into Weirs Lookout for morning tea. Weirs Lookout is the location of the old supply huts for the lighthouse. Supplies were hauled up the cliff by cable from supply ships anchored down in the Cove. A channel was cut by hand into the cliff face for the cable to run in. Interesting, and a show of the determination and resilience of the people back in those days.
After, we drive to Remarkable Rocks, a massive, granite intrusion through the surrounding limestone. It has weathered into interesting shapes that dominate the surrounding landscape. We were very lucky, the rain on the rocks brought out all their colours and the weather broke for about 30 minutes and we had bright blue skies, great for our photos.
We got back to the Lodge around 12:30. On the way back in Toby showed us the Baudin Lounge, named after the French explorer who was in this area at the same time as Mathew Flinders. The lounge is an area where the lodge has a large TV, used mainly for showing documentaries, etc. It also serves as a games room, or just an escape from the main lodge common areas. The room has an enormous annotated map of Kangaroo Island, showing places of interest and its shipwreck history. All the guest rooms in the Lodge are named after the island’s shipwrecks. There are also a good collection of artwork by local artists.
After lunch we had a quiet afternoon, followed by dinner and an early night.
24 June 2025. Tuesday Southern Ocean Lodge, Kangaroo Island
We woke after 7am, opened our blinds and were met by a wild, windy, rainy day, with big and increasingly so, seas. Watching seas like that is like watching a roaring fire, so mesmerizing, you get lost in its power.
Our morning was very relaxing, reading, sorting photos and just relaxing while watching the seas. The sun broke through the clouds every now and then, creating some magnificent rainbows. We hope we got a few good photos of all the action, although we know they will never do the reality any justice.
Late afternoon I went on an excursion to Kelly Hill Caves, Deb decided to have a “relaxing” afternoon (finished up ¾ packing for our departure tomorrow) in our room.
I left for the caves at around 3pm, there were about 7 of us on the tour, driven by David. The ride there and back was a bit hairy, about 80km/hr along corrugated waterlogged dirt road with big water pools, wasn’t much fun!
Anyway moving on.
The caves were about 5km from the turn off to Hansen Bay. When we got there we were met by a very down to earth Ranger named Linda. She was very knowledgeable and had a great sense of humour.
We were encouraged to move quickly up the 400m track up the hill to the cave entrance as she could “feel” another big squall coming in. She was right. We got to the entrance to the caves and it bucketed down. After a short safety briefing we all headed down into the caves. The first level was 6m down, there we were given a basic geology lesson of how the caves formed and the structures contained within them.
We were also told the legend about how the caves got their name. The story goes that around 1880 a horse by the name of Kelly fell into a sink hole, and down into the caves. It goes that the locals searched for days/weeks/months and never found a trace of the horse. It still hasn’t been found. David, our driver, said he had done his own research into the story, and discovered that the horses owner, a Mr Kelsy, owed some money. – the equivalent of the cost of a horse, and that he made up the whole story. Turns out his debt was forgiven on the condition that his horse was found within the caves, it has been said that Kelsy didn’t hang around to find out!
Back to the caves.
The caves are dry, meaning that they are no longer growing. There is no water penetrating into the caves to make the stalactites and stalagmites grow or initiate any more.
We walked further down into the caves to 18m below the surface, the deepest the public can go. The stalactites and stalagmites were relatively small compared to other limestone caves I’d been in, but these were really interesting in the numbers of them in clusters throughout the caves. In the main cave, the lights were dimmed and we were given a recorded audio presentation accompanied by a light show of the geological history of the caves. It was very interesting and entertaining. It ran for 10 to 15 mins, after which we were given time to look around a bit longer and people had selfies taken with the unique background. We then made our way back to the surface.
We thanked Linda and were back in the bus for the trip back to the Lodge in no time. The trip back was a similar experience to the trip out, nail biting at times.
We headed up for dinner at 6pm. We sat in the main lounge and had canapés and (I had) a drink before dinner. It was our “last supper” and we both rated it our best of the stay.
After dinner we retired to our room and finished about 90% of our packing ready to leave tomorrow. We have to be out of our room by 7:50am, and then we have a bus to the airport at 8:30am. It’s a bit sad that our break is coming to an end, it has been a nice, indulgent stay.
25 June 2025. Wednesday Southern Ocean Lodge, Kangaroo Island to Adelaide and home.
We were all packed and out of our room by 7:45. We took the long walk up the hill for the last time this stay and went into breakfast. We got a table by the window and watched the last bit of the sunrise and the waves pounding into the coastline. A magic way to finish our stay.
We were the only guests leaving on the 10:30 flight today, so we had the transfer shuttle to ourselves. We left the SOL at about 8:30 and arrived at the airport around 9:20. We checked in and then went to the SOL VIP Lounge, a comfortable, quiet place to rest before our flight. The lounge has tea and coffee making facilities (although I couldn’t get the coffee maker to work), a small fridge full of drinks and there was fruit and other snacks. Our flight boarded at about 10:30 and after a smooth 35 min flight we landed in Adelaide.
After getting our luggage, we got a taxi home, dropped our bags off, did a couple of errands and then went and picked Louis up from our dog sitters. It sounded like he had a good time and they are looking forward to having him again.
By 2pm we were all back home and relaxing together, the end of a fabulous 4 days of indulgence.
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