Kangaroo Island

Kangaroo Island is Australia's third-largest island, a 145-kilometre slab of farmland, scrub and wild coast lying off the tip of the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. Cut off from the mainland when sea levels rose at the end of the last Ice Age, it became a refuge where wildlife survived largely untouched by the foxes and rabbits that ravaged the continent. Nearly half of the island has never been cleared, and around a quarter is protected in national parks, conservation parks and wilderness areas. Sea lions lounge on the sand at Seal Bay, kangaroos, wallabies and echidnas move through the bush, and the island is the last refuge in South Australia of a rare subspecies of glossy black cockatoo.

The western end belongs to Flinders Chase National Park, where the island's most famous sights stand on the edge of the Southern Ocean. The Remarkable Rocks are a cluster of huge granite boulders perched on a dome above the sea, hollowed and sculpted by wind, salt spray and rain and splashed with orange lichen. Nearby, at Cape du Couedic, Admirals Arch is a natural rock bridge hung with stalactites, where fur seals haul out on the ledges below. Beneath the southern and western coasts runs a network of limestone caves formed from ancient dune sands, and the north coast is lined with quiet sheltered bays.

The island takes its name from a meal: in March 1802 the English navigator Matthew Flinders landed on its north coast and called it Kangaroo Island after the animals his hungry crew shot there. The French expedition of Nicolas Baudin arrived soon afterwards and charted much of the coastline, which is why so many capes and bays bear French names. Sealers and escaped convicts lived rough on the island for decades before the first official settlers of the new colony of South Australia landed at Kingscote in 1836. In 1885 the island was declared a sanctuary for Ligurian honey bees, imported from Italy, and their pure-bred descendants are still kept here. In the summer of 2019–20 bushfires burned close to half the island, including most of Flinders Chase, and the forest has been regrowing since.

Getting there

The main town is Kingscote on the north-east coast, and the nearest airport, Kingscote Airport (KGC), lies about 22 km away and has flights from Adelaide. Most visitors arrive by vehicle ferry across Backstairs Passage from Cape Jervis, at the tip of the Fleurieu Peninsula, to Penneshaw on the island's eastern end. The nearest mainland city area is the southern suburbs of Adelaide around Morphett Vale, about 130 km away; Adelaide Airport (ADL) is the main gateway on the mainland.