Flinders Chase National Park

Flashing back 24 hours we take you to one of two posts on our further adventures on Kangaroo Island. This is the lighthouse at the western end of the island, built to help sailors navigate the rather treacherous waters. It was built after several catastrophic accidents, although judging from the dates of some accidents we aren't sure how much the lighthouse helped. There seemed to be just as many after it was constructed as there were before, but maybe that's just because there was more ship traffic? Anyway, this was constructed in 1909 and its lights could be seen 27 miles out to sea.

About the western twenty percent of Kangaroo Island is set aside for conservation as Flinder's Chase National Park. It is beautiful, and full of great views, camp sites, walking trails, etc. The two main attractions for people just looking to do a day trip (i.e. us) are the Admiral's Arch and the Remarkable Rocks. Much like the Remarkable Cave in Tasmania, the Australians seem to favor very literal names for things. "Well, gee, Carl, those are some remarkable looking rocks over there. What do you think we should call 'em?"

This picture was taken on the walk down to Admiral's Arch which is on a small little outskirt of rock on the far southwestern end of the island.

And here are the rocks below. No wonder they needed a lighthouse.

Behold! Admiral's Arch! This picture does not do it justice at all. It's a giant limestone arch that's been carved out of the rock by the wind and sea. Based on the gale force winds we walked through trying to get there we were not suprised at all. Also, it seemed to be THE hangout for seals, as they were lounging on rocks all over the place. Admiral's Arch- beautiful, but thanks to all of the seals, not the best smelling place we've ever been.

After leaving the Arch it was only a short drive to the Remarkable Rocks. Here they are on the approach.

We were in for a totally unexpected surprise. You can actually walk up and touch them! This would never happen in the States. There is just a sign that says, "Hey, have fun, these rocks are awesome, but just so you know there is a sheer cliff on the other side, so you probably shouldn't walk past certain points." Then to drive the point home, they tell the story of how three people died trying to save a guy who walked too far out and fell off a few years ago. Australians are not a people to sugar-coat things.

Duly warned and observant of how far to walk it was time for silly pictures!
Greg trapped underneath a rock. It's not looking good for him.  He should have stayed farther away.

This is Laurel's alter ego, the Rock Gremlin, popping up out of nowhere to say, "Hello!"

These rocks were formed by volcanic action pushing some granite and rock up through the Earth's surface. At first it would have been just a smooth dome, but all that wind and water and salt over the last thousands of years have eroded it into these fantastic rock shapes.

Good thing Greg was here or this rock might have tipped over. They have a very cool display based on a photograph of this particular rock that demonstrates the continual erosion happening here. They have a photo of some English couple from 1920ish standing in front of this overhang, and you can tell that since that time a foot or so of rock is gone. They estimate that in another couple hundred years, these rocks will be all gone.

Laurel and the Great Southern Ocean behind.  Brr...

More cool rocks.

So, yeah, this was amazingly beautiful, and it was really fun to be able to walk in and amongst the rocks. A really pleasant surprise that may have been the highlight of the whole trip. We highly recommend it.

McLaren Vale

Remember how we told you that we were completely unprepared for how big Kangaroo Island was? After having spent 48 hours on it, and having circumnavigated the island the day before, we were somehow still shocked by the distance from our hotel to the ferry. We had a nice, liesurely morning, packed our bags and piled into the car. And then the Garmin told us our time of arrival was about 10 minutes before the ferry was supposed to leave. They recommend you arrive 30 minutes beforehand. Of course then, 5 minutes into our now rather frantic drive, the gaslight came on. Double-crap. Laurel called the ferry people to let them know we were running "a little" behind and found a gas station on the map not too far out of our way.

When we got to the gas station, at first it was closed, but then a guy hustled over to open it up when he saw we were there. This seemed to be typical KI- closed until patrons arrived.  We thought our luck had turned, but then we found out he only took cash. So we bought $11 worth of gas, paid entirely in the spare coins we could find in our pockets. This isn't quite as ridiculous as it sounds since Australia has $1 and $2 coins, but still. With about a quarter tank of gas we arrived at the ferry with 6 minutes to spare. Phew!

Our plan for the day was to drive from Kangaroo Island to McLaren Vale, about an hour's drive south of Adelaide. We didn't have high expectations for lunch since it was mostly small towns along the way. However, we hit a jackpot. When we inevitably had to stop for gas again to actually buy a full-tank, we were in the town of Normanville. While Greg filled the tank up, Laurel scouted out the surrounding shops. She found this place, Jetty, an entirely locally-sourced family-style diner. It. Was. Amazing. We loved their morrocan lentils so much we tried to get them to tell us how to make it. The woman at the cash register showed us a few of the ingredients that went into the sauce, but two attempts to re-create the dish since then have failed. Pretty sure they left something out.

Here is another one of the "Stop Creeping" signs we were telling you about. Looking at this. Do you get "don't speed" from it? We sure don't. It's a little strange, but maybe that's the point? Or maybe the rest of the advertising (as in commercials?) help it make sense.

McLaren Vale and Barrosa Valley are the two main wine regions of South Australia, and they could not be any more different. Barossa is spread-out and feels rather aristocratic. McLaren Vale is compact, tourist friendly, with multiple hotels, restuarants, and vineyards all within kilometers of each other.

I hate to say this, but the scenery at this winery, which was named Tapestry, was the best thing about it. The wine was, quite frankly, crap. It was the only place we went to that we didn't buy at least a bottle. I think the staff knew it was bad, too. The woman who was pouring our tastings had a way of kind of lingering to see what we thought. It felt a little desperate. Needless to say, we did not stay long.

We went to another handeful of wineries that day, the rest of which were amazing. However, our favorite of McLaren Vale was probably Coriole.  It was a very simple, yet beautiful, family-owned winery. Below is a picture of the building that served as the tasting room. It was a Tuesday and the previous weekend had been a holiday, so it was very quiet when we were there. This made for some excellent one-on-one service with lots of stories about the winery's background and fun details about each of the wines. Also, we got to help taste/finish the leftover bottles. We wouldn't have wanted the girl serving to have to check them all by herself- we're helpers like that.

And here is the final haul. Australian wine delivery service is fast. Half the boxes we bought and had shipped beat us home! The rest arrived within days of us getting home. No broken bottles, no hitches, we were impressed. I guess when wine is one of the things your country is known for, it's not something you are going to mess around with. This picture is actually incomplete, we still had another box on its way. And yes, they are divided up by category (location & type/grape primarily) in this picture. The longest row on the left are the Muscat & Tokay bottles (which are types of fortified wines, like Port) that we got an awesome deal on while in Barossa.  Now, if we only had a subterranean wine cellar, this would be perfect.

Christmas in July, Brodburger, and Beer

At Gold Creek, which is not far from where we live (and featured prominently in our blog-post about Cockington Greene), they have a really cute, small restaurant called Sweet Copper. One of the things they are known for in Canberra is, they do a ten-course "Last Meal on the Titanic" dinner every year on the day the Titanic sank. Period dress is highly encouraged. Once a month, they do a reservation only, themed multi-course meal. July's theme is always Christmas in July, and since both our birthdays are in July it seemed the perfect joint birthday night out. Spoiler alert, it was.

We think Australians are secretly very sad that they have Christmas in summer and thus miss out on all of the "White Christmas" related fun. Christmas in July is apparently a fairly popular idea. It certainly feels right. It was freezing outside, but with that fireplace you can see behind us it was nice and cozy.

Dinner was amazing, and huge! Scallop and lobster appetizers, pesto and bread, sorbet, turkey roll with mashed potatos and roast vegetables- there was no concern about leaving hungry.

Also, we look good together.

Happy Birthday to us!

This blog-post is a bit of a mix of things we've been up to over the last month or so. This is Brodburger, a Canberra institution. It's a little trailer that sells burgers on the shore of Lake Burley-Griffen. It's on the south-side, near the hotel we were in when we first got here, so we don't get down that way too often anymore, but it's totally worth the trek. Easily the best burgers in Canberra, it scratches the Five Guys itch nicely.

I'm not clear how much of this is true, but legend has it that the owners just parked the trailer there one day and never took it away. It has to violate some kind of zoning ordanace since it's right in the middle of a public park, but when the city tried to make them move, there was a near riot. I can totally understand why, it's that good. Everything is made to order so it's not exactly quick, but on a beautiful Spring day that's not really a problem.

As we waited for our burgers and chips (fries) we wandered over to the lake to say hi to the swans.

How freaking huge is that goose's neck!? We're pretty sure that goose society is organized around the length of one's neck. The longer the neck, the higher in society you are. Along this reasoning, this goose is clearly His Excellency the Grand Emperor Ganderious the First. The two geese on either side of Ganderious are his honor guard, charged with defending the Emperor from both threats winged (magpies) and non-winged (small toddlers, mostly).

Mmmm-mmmm, that is a tasty burger.

The magpies clearly agree and started to gather in hopes of food-scraps.

Greg foolishly fed one a chip, which drew and even larger crowd. When no more chips were thrown to the ground, the mob became increasingly hostile. Fortunately, Laurel was around to save the day. She promptly organized a reward system for the magpies, with strict rules they must follow if they wanted to be fed. The magpies had to organize themselves into an orderly line, and one at a time, jump on the carpark rail, at which point they would be rewarded with a small chip, and then fly away to make room for the next bird. They caught on surprisingly fast. This is a picture of the first members of the angry crowd before Laurel estbalished order.  There were easily 20+ magpies by the end.

For Greg's birthday, Laurel got him a DIY (do it yourself) beer kit. This is awesome for several reasons-

1. Brewing your own beer may be the awesomest (non-viking) thing ever.
2. It's Coopers, which is Greg's favorite Australian beer, by far.
3. It's a complete kit, coming with everything you need, wort (aka pre-beer mix), sugar, bottles, caps, vat, everything.
4. This is the only way to get beer in Australia that is not ridiculously expensive. Six-packs here start at $18. Yeah, you read that right. And that's for your most basic of beers. At most bars, a glass of wine is often cheaper than a pint of beer.

Naturally, all of this had to be put to work very fast. It's remarkably simple. Mix beer, wort, sugar, and approximately 22 liters of water, then add yeast and let sit for about a week. The only tricky part is maintaining a farily warm, constant temperature. We wrapped a blanket around the vat, which did the trick.

After a week, it's time for bottling!

A short time later we had 30 750-ml bottles of beer! It needs to sit for about two weeks, and then it's ready for drinking. Since we are always running behind on our blog-posts, I can tell you the beer is a smashing success! Bob, we're getting ready for you to come visit in December. We just bought all the ingredients to make a Canadian Blonde-style beer. I think you and I can drink it all in two to three weeks time. I believe in us.

Dinosaurs! (and oh yeah, Sydney)

Flash back to Andrew & Paige's visit in May for this post.  After, they left for Cairns to visit the Great Barrier Reef they headed to Sydney to finish up their trip with Andrew's sister and dad.  It so happened, the weekend they were in Sydney, we were also there visiting our friends Alex & Matthew.  Alex and Matthew had recently moved to Sydney from Canberra.  They generously offered us room in their beautiful new apartment that overlooks the Sydney Harbour.  Here's a view from their balcony. 

Pretty awesome, huh?

So another reason for our Sydney trip was to see Walking with Dinosaurs, the Arena Spectacular!  We somehow convinced Alex and Matthew to go with us. By somehow, we mean Alex was like, "Meh, I'm only marginally interested," and then Matthew said, "Greatest thing ever. We have to go!"  This was excellent for two reasons.  One, life's always more fun with friends.  And two, we're not sure we would have been able to navigate the Sydney subway on our own.  This is a view of the bustling Sydney subway on our way to Dinosaurs.  Espresso on the go anyone?

The Sydney trains are triple deckers!  That's right, you walk on and can either go up or down to the next level if you think "ground level" just isn't interesting enough for you.  Fancy.

This is Acer Arena, where all the glorious dinosaur action was taking place.  We didn't let the fact they were advertising for an upcoming Miley Cyrus concert diminish our excitement.

So, the show is essentially a two-hour science lesson for kids, narrated by a "paleontologist." Laurel commented that his hair was way too fabulous for a paleontologist. This science lesson, however, features life-size, animatronics dinosaurs, so it's automatically the greatest science lesson ever. Here's a Utahosaurus facing off against a Stegosaurus.  The pictures are a bit blurry because of the extreme dino-action.

Velociraptors! Ever since Jurassic Park they are mandatory for any self-respecting dino-show. Although, to digress for a moment, when Greg grew up and memorized his dinosaurs there was one called Deinonychus. And Greg is 98% certain that the so-called raptors of Jurassic Park, while extra-awesome, are in fact Deinonychus.

They also had a flying Pterodactyl-type dinosaur. It was all right. Greg was hoping for swooping all over for the areana, but they decided for the moving screen behind the dinosaur to give the illusion of movement. Oh well, I guess they are just saving the budget for the T-rex.

Apparently a Triceratops was not cool enough, so they used a Torosaurus instead. This also included the best line of the night, "With its horns and muscular physique, what could challenge a torosaurus . . . except for ANOTHER TOROSAURUS!?" Cue Torosaurus fight.

While we may have been the oldest people there without children, Dinosuars didn't disappoint.  And more importantly, a childhood dream of Greg's was fulfulled.  Dinosuar success!

Later that night, we met up with Andrew and Paige and hit the bars of Sydney. Andrew thought he'd participate in an age-old Australian tradition of challenging Greg to a bar fight.  In the end they decided to just get another drink instead.  Good times!

  Alex and Matthew were fantastic tour guides.  Thanks for a great weekend!

KI: Pelicans and Penguins

Our first night at Kangaroo Island was spent attending both a Pelican Feeding and a nighttime Little Penguin Walk.  The pelican feeding was really funny, because it’s just one guy, a bucket of fish, and a whole flock of hungry pelicans waiting for their evening handout.  The pelicans know when it’s free food time, which we all know is the best kind of food.  When we arrived, there were already a whole bunch of them just kind of loitering on the rocks, but as soon as people started sitting on the benches they immediately started climbing on to the platform.  Smart birds.  A fair number of seagulls started to assemble as well.

Here are a few pelican facts for you, since we know you’re wondering.  Pelicans look big, but only weigh about 6.5 kg. They have a wing span just over 2m. Unlike most water birds they don’t make any natural oil on their feathers to make them waterproof.  This means that when they are in the water, they go to great effort to keep their wings out of the water.  This is for two reasons, one- they’ll get cold, and two- they can’t fly with wet wings.  When they do dive (or try as they’re not very good at it) they have to stay on the ground and walk around with their wings spread until they dry.  We also learned more about their ribbony beak movement I tried to describe in an earlier post.  It is called bill ribboning (I was close!) and is used to attract potential mates during mating season.  The strange mating sound is made by filling their bottom bill with air and then vibrating it against their top bill.  So there you have it, mystery solved!

Laurel displayed her expert sneaking skills to get close for a photo-op.

Here is the aforementioned pelican-guy, complete with seagull on his head.

Alright, back to the pelican feeding.  We can’t remember his name so we will refer to the man that was feeding the pelicans as Food Man from here on out.  I’m pretty sure that’s how the pelicans thought of him too.  First Food Man raised some individual pieces of fish in the air to inspire, as he called it, “aerial combat.”  One seagull would swoop over and grab the fish, then try to fly off before the other seagulls (and maybe a pelican or two) swarmed him and made him drop it.  It was pretty funny.  The pelicans, however, were not pleased at this waste of perfectly good fish.

Finally, came the main event.  It was pretty unceremonious.  Food Man just took giant handfuls of fish and tossed them into the swarming mass of pelicans.  Chaos ensued.  Each pelican was out to get as much fish as possible, regardless of whether he could actually eat that much or not.  That bill holds A LOT of fish.  Several pelicans were lucky enough to get the lion’s share of a fish toss, and would have this giant bulge of fish in their neck.  They had no chance of swallowing it, so they would go into the water and drink to try to help them swallow.  This is what the other pelicans were waiting for.  Pelicans are very social birds, except when it’s food-time.  Then, all bets are off.  Several other pelicans would follow the first one into the water and try to force his head underwater, so he would have to cough up and lose the fish.  It’s a tough world out there.

 

Little penguins! I love them!

Before the penguin walk, they took us through a small aquarium, the highlight of which was the cuddlefish. I never knew this before, but cuddlefish are amazing! They communicate though color flashes on the skin- they can change their pigmentation and appearance at will. The blue stripes you can see on his side, were actually pulsing on and off.

This cuddlefish showed an intelligence we have never seen in a fish. When pelicans see a bunch of people gather at the harbor and know its food time, I'm not all that surprised. Birds are pretty smart. When a fish sees a bunch of people outside his tank, and knows he's about to be fed, I'm kind of impressed. This guy was hiding in the back of the tank, but as soon as the tour group came over he came right out to the front.

When they threw the fish in (poor fish) it immediately dived underneath a log to hide. The assistant tour guide behind me muttured, "That was a bad idea," and she ws not kidding. Mr. Cuddlefish just sauntered over, and then lightning fast shot some tentacles out and reeled the fish right in his mouth. It all happened in about three seconds. Fish in tank, puff of dirt and mud, no more fish.

Now, we couldn't actually show this, but this is crazy. Mr. Cuddlefish doesn't like scales, so he actually somehow scales the fish while its in his mouth and then casually spits the scales out like the seeds of a watermelon. Greg kind of wants a cuddlefish now.

The Little Penguin, previously known as the Fairy Penguin, is the smallest penguin in the world and the only one native to Australia.  It’s only about 8 inches high and weighs about 1.5 kg.  Its call sounds a lot like one is being strangled.  Those cries serve a good purpose though.  The penguin that is staying with its young will call out to let the other penguin out hunting for fish know where their burrow is.  Penguins have a very poor sense of navigation, and without the call to guide them they would have to spend several hours a night trying to smell their way home.

Now since its dark out, and these little guys are kind of shy, we didn't really get many good pictures, but here's the best of the lot.