You know it’s been a good day when you can pull to the side of the road and take a picture of a koala with your phone. Or when it’s not worth stopping to photograph kangaroos and wallabies because you’ve seen so many. Or when you say “Galahs” with a shrug when yet another group of bright pink parrots fly over your head. And then there were the sea lions….
Kangaroo Island, a 20 minute flight south of Adelaide, is a very unusual place. The currents between the island and the mainland are vicious, and the island is prone to devastating brushfires every twenty years or so (the last one in 2020). As a consequence it has had episodic rather than continuous human habitation. It has no rabbits and no foxes, so it has both animal and plant species that were eliminated on the mainland many years ago. It has some local variants or subspecies— for example the Western Grey Kangaroos are chocolate brown rather than the grey of the mainland. The island also has the unusual problem of an overpopulation of koalas.
There is a large sea lion colony on the south shore. There were quite a few pups on the beach. The mothers go out to sea for three days feeding then come back to feed their pup. While the mothers are at sea, the pups play together, body surf, call for mom, or just sleep. We saw kangaroos “everywhere”, while wallabies tend to stay in the under brush for protection from Wedge-tailed Eagles. We saw about half of the western section of the island today, with much more to come.
Pictured: Koala, three Australian Sea Lion pups, Western Grey Kangaroo, Rosenberg Wallaby
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