Kangaroo Island Shops

So, after Adelaide we drove south to Kangaroo Island. KI is about a forty five minute ferry ride from Cape Jervis which is about a two hour drive south from Adelaide. We were quite surprised when we actually got to the island though. While we had research things to on KI, we had never actually researched the size of the island. Apparently, it's the third biggest island in Australia, and is about 200 kilometers across. This was a shock. Most of the things we wanted to visit were on the opposite end of the island where our hotel was. Yay, more driving! On the upside, KI was just as beautiful as we had been led to believe.

It only took us four tries to pull this picture off with the boat behind us. Totally worth it.

We were going to be on the island for about 48 hours. We had divided our two days so the first day was spent visiting the various island shops, and the second day seeing more critters. We got onto the island right around lunch time, and a little winery was right off the main road. We figured it would be a good place to get some nibblies (and we can't say no to a winery), so we pulled off. For the first of several times, we walked up to a shop and saw the "closed" sign. We were just turning away, when an employee saw us outside and waved us in. Apparently, most places are open only when customers are around. Here's the locally sourced cheese and salami plate we had for lunch with wines, and our absolutely to die-for view.

After the winery we visited Clifford's Honey Farm, which runs a thriving honey export business as well as a small museum dedicated to the honey-making process. We don't have pictures, because nothing was all that photogenic, but it was still pretty neat. They have some super-rare strain of Italian bees (the last of this type in the world), which explains why bees were on the list of things you could not bring on the island. They don't want new colonies intermixing. Although, really, who travels with bees?

Next on the drive was the Island Pure dairy farm. Nothing but sheep products! Mmmm, cheese...

Before going in, we wandered the grounds for a little bit and found the barn where they keep all the lambs. Aren't they the cutest? Baby lambies!

We took a tour and sampled the various kinds of cheeses, and got lucky on the timing. It happened to be during the sheep's afternoon milking so we able to watch how that was done. It's mostly automated. They just round the sheep up, and let them through the gates ten by ten. They feed them while they are milking them, so they really don't mind.

We took piles of pictures during this part of the trip, so we've decided to split the day into 2 posts.  Stay tuned for more cute critters!