Our 60th Piggies Celebrations were over, but being newly retired and with time on our hands, we stayed on in South Australia to continue exploring this historic and scenic region. Kangaroo Island, off the southern tip of the Fleurieu Peninsula, is Australia’s third largest and least developed Island. It boasts a natural beauty and bio-diversity showcasing typical flora and fauna with limited access wilderness trails. Perfect. Good friends Tom and Liz had completed all the necessary arrangements for the four of us to tackle the 66km KI Wilderness Trail together. After final goodbyes to the last remaining Piggies revellers, we set forth from McLaren Vale in our hired car and headed south. Several hours and one car ferry crossing later, we arrived at the western end of the island and encamped in our comfortable self-contained chalet at the Western KI Caravan Park.
Immediately we were immersed in an environment favouring natural wildlife. A cursory examination of the surrounding fields and bush lands revealed koalas sleeping and feeding in the gum trees, families of wallabies roaming the open grasslands and echidna waddling through the scrub, stopping to snuffle and scratch in the dirt for ants. All this while overhead a panoply of birds twittered and squawked as they soared through the treetops. It was exciting and intoxicating, boding very well for the ensuing four-day hike.
In the West we have the Bibbulmun Track, a way-marked path through the bush and along the coast from Perth to Albany, dotted with campsites along the way. It is freely accessible to anyone who chooses to walk it, either section by section or end-to-end. The KI Wilderness Trail is similar, except that it has restricted access (and it’s much shorter). Divided into five sections and covering 66km of bush, grasslands and coast, it winds its way around the wild and rugged southern end of Kangaroo Island.
We completed the route in four days, walking the last sections on one day. Mark, the caravan park owner and manager, also runs a personal transport business and ferried us, along with six other hikers, to and from the start and finish of each section daily. In short, the organisation and management of the national park is excellent and the walk itself was sensational. In the course of our hike we encountered varied terrain from low grasslands, open farmlands, eucalyptus bushland, rolling hills and valleys, white sand beaches and rocky coastal cliffs.
Some of the coastal scenery reminded us of our recent walks on the English South West Coastal Path, with rugged cliffs and steep ascents and descents. The wildlife along the way was plentiful and included a myriad of birdlife, snakes and bob tails, kangaroos (it isn’t called Kangaroo Island for nothing) and wallabies, echina, evidence of wild pigs, insects and bugs and, most endearingly, Australian and fur seals frolicking and basking on the rocks in almost every bay. A notable natural phenomenon is The Remarkbles, an aptly named collection of large hard limestone rocks perched high on a clifftop and visible for miles along the coast. Stunning.
The weather during our stay on KI was very kind to us and apart from being surprisingly cold at night and in the mornings, we didn’t experience any rain to hamper our walk. We were also fortunate to have Tom and Liz as our travel companions, a very easy going and fun-loving couple.
Among Tom’s many talents and skills are bird-watching and gastronomy. A keen amateur twitcher, every bird we saw and many we didn’t were accurately identified with the assistance of Tom’ binoculars and a “Birds of Australia” tome, and every meal in our basic little cabin became a gourmet feast under Tom’s expertise. Liz’s contribution to our evenings in the cabin, recovering from the rigours of the day’s walk, was an induction into the wonderful world of cards. Non-card players as we are (despite the efforts of our friends Jackie and David aboard last year’s relocation cruise and, more recently, Chris and Amy in Spello), Liz had us gamely competing for honours in both “Up and Down the River” and “Canasta”.
Returning to Adelaide from KI, with a whistle stop at d’Arenberg Wineries iconic Cube at McLaren Vale, we had a final evening and then breakfast together at the Central Markets. Then it was farewell to the last of our Piggies celebrants and we were off on our own towards the Clare Valley and the next Clapmack Retirement Dream adventure.
Clapmacks Foray into Retirement 