Norman's Blog: Kangaroo Island

Kangaroo Island

I booked into the Aurora Ozone Hotel on the waterfront in Kingscote. It has changed little since the photos in reception dating from the 19th century. The first visitors here who settled were sealers and whalers who had a reputation for being boisterous ruffians. Judging by the appearance of the hotel in which someone had invested a lot of money, it had been cleansed of it rougher elements and was a more gentile towm.

A view across the bay from the front of the hotel.

On the outskirts of the town is a grain silo. It too has had a mural pianted on it and is on the Silo Circuit. We entered the Flinders Chase National Park.

The island has suffered badly from a massive bush fire in December 2019 with a resurgence in January 2020. It burnt more than 50% of the island. Australian forests are used to bush fires and have adapted. They can recover quickly and some species thrive in this environment with frequent fires required to germinate their seeds.

This bush fire was different as it was more intense and hotter than normal fires. Local trees can survive a lower temperature fire that passes through quickly. But a long lasting intense fire will kill them. This particular fire killed the trees. It spread rapidly and quickly could not be contained. It destroyed half the island. It reduced houses and businesses to ash. Large fields of crops disappeared in smoke. More than 60,000 livestock perished. Untold numbers of wildlife were killed or injured who couldn't escape the fires. Two people lost their lives. It was a devastaing blow to the community.

I was visiting five years on from the bush fire. There is still plenty of evidence on the west of the island of a massive fire. Some of the larger trees still bear the scars of blackened trunks but have survived. Some of the smaller trees didn't survive the fire. They stand as bare skeletons of trees with their trunks and branches bleached by the sun, devoid of any leaves.

There was widespread concern that some of the forest on the sandy soils would not recover. There are before and after pictures of whole areas of previous thick forest, now just exposed ground, covered in nothing but ash.

Nature is extraordingarily resisilient. The ground is now covered by greenery. The dead tree trunks and branches are still visible, reaching high into the sky, but the ground cover now stands as high as a man.

We were making our way through the burnt out but recovering western area of the island towards the Remarkable Rocks. It is a magma intrusion into surrounding bedrock. The surrounding layers have been eroded and what can be seen today is the more resistant granite rocks left after the more easily eroded bedrock had been eroded.

It is not a smooth dome as when it was molten it forced its way into cracks in the surrounding rock. The weaker rock had been eroded and there are granite boulders sitting on top of the main granite intrusion. These have been weathered into odd shapes.

Then just as we were leaving the Remakable Roads car park, we saw a tiger snake crossing the road. In other places in Australia, these snakes have tiger like markings but in the south they are such a dark overall colour that the strips are barely visible. And it was impossible to see any detail as it slithered quickly across the road to get away from us.

And a bit of fieldcraft and local knowledge. These snakes are venomous and can be deadly. If you see one, it is best to stand still and let it slither way. If bitten, you will need urgent medical attention but hospitals have the right anti-venom provided that you can identify the snake. And just for comfort the bigger you are, the safer you are. The snake will recognise that you are too big to be eaten and may just give you a dry bite as a warning. But you might not know for certain for twelve hours.

After the Remarkable Rocks, it was a short drive past a lighthouse to the car park at Admiral's Arch. There is a gentle boardwalk to the cliff edge and then dozens of steps down to the viewing platform. The Admiral's Arch is a cave through a rocky promontory that forms the rock arch.

From the steps, there were views of lots of seals sleeping or resting on the rocks.

The air around the headland is full of salty spray thrown up by waves crashing against the cliffs. The salt builds up and plants have to be able to cope with the salt. The round leaf pigface and the native pigface have an interesting way of dealing with the salt. Their fleshy leaves absorb the salt an turn red. When the concentration becomes too high, the leaves whither and drop off.

The light house.

I surprised this pair of ducks and whilst they were close enough to get a reasonable photo, they didn't oblige and turn sideways for a bettr photo.

We drove on to the Hanson's Bay Koala Sanctuary. It is located on a former farm covering 4,000 hectares. It was deemed unsuitable for farming and so had not been part of the land distribution to returning servicemen and had remained as Crown Property. A farmer bought the parcel of land for AUD10,000 (one dollar per acre) and started to clear the land to create a dairy farm. In 1985, he had cleared a quarter of the property using his bulldozer. In a freak accident, a tree he was clearing fell the wrong way, cruching his bulldozer and killing him. The property subsequently became a sanctuary and the cleared land is being reclaimed by the forest.

The area was affected by the bushfires but is recovering. As it is a sanctuary, it is not fenced. The koalas like to stay in familiar places and so don't roam very far. But as it is a sanctuary, the rangers don't interfere with the animals or feed them. Unlike animals on the mainland, the koalas on the island do not have clamydia. A fenced nature reserve was creayed on the mainland and 28 breeding pairs were transported to the mainland. They are a disease free population acting as a reserve clean gene pool.

The biggest threat to these koalas are feral cats. The feral cats are a problem throughout the country and are responsible for the deaths of thousands of indigenous animals. Unfortunately, many of the cleverer cats survived the bush fires and they and their smarter off-spring are a bigger problem now than before the fire. Traps are baited but the cats are getting better at avoiding the traps. Various baits are being tested to find one that can successfully trap the feral cats.

Before the fire, there were an estimated 60,000 koalas on the island and their numbers were getting out of control. Attempts were made to neuter individuals. The animals don't like to be handled and it causes them a lot of stress. Several neutered individuals never rcovered from the stress of the process and died so it wasn't considered a success. The issue of there being too many koalas on the island is no longer a problem. Eve today, five years after the fire, there are only 16,000 on the island.

Immeadiately after the fire, teams sought out injured animals. There were teams of vets who had to judge which animals could survive and which would have to be put down. Much of their natural food had been destroyed so eucalyptus had to be flown in from the mainland. They are fussy eaters. Of the hundreds of species of euclids, they only eat 38, some at only certain times of the year. Just14 species make up their regular diet. And they only pick leaves off the trees. If they are presented leaves that are on the ground, they ignore them even if they are hungry. The sprigs that had been flown in had to be put in the trees to fool them into picking them and eating.

A sleeping koala. They sleep for 20 hours a day, slowly digesting their food. The leaves aren't very nutricious and are full of toxins. They have poor eyesight but good hearing and a sense of smell. They will smell the leaves and if it has too many toxins, the koala will ignore it.

They have favourite trees to sleep in, but don't use the same tree all the time. Their favourite trees can be found as there are a lot of claw marks on the trunks and a lot of poo around the base.