Kangaroo Island

About three hours out of Adelaide you arrive at Kangaroo island. Up until about three weeks ago the whole region had had an average rainfall compared to the Sahara for the past couple of years, but suddenly the drought broke as the rains came. The island apparantly has gotten beautiful again very quickly as all the former vegitation spouts back to life.

Winter down here is the low season, so out of a group of 8 on the tour we had 1 tour guide, 2 other trainee tour guides, an Argentinian, a Belgian and amazingly 3 of us were Irish.

We toured the island for two days and stayed in their wilderness cottege that night. It was in a really nice spot, teaming with wildlife. I managed to try Kangaroo ('roo') steak for the first time - A really lean meat, and very tasty ... but not as nice as beef. The roo burgers were lovely too. Another Australia institution is Vegemite - A vegitable version of Marmite - it was invented and sent to the Australian POWs during WW2 to supplement their lack of vegetables in the camps and sent over to them. I didn't think it was very nice - a bit like putting lots of soya sauce on your toast.

The weather was a little bit cold on the island. Some of the group were dying to sleep outside in the wilderness for an authentic bush camp. I couldn't bring myself to it in this weather, so I bunked in the cottege. They slept out in 'swags' - Big, thick, matress like, sleeping bags and are in fact very warm ... unfortunately the ones they had were not so waterproof and it deluged through the whole night ... not good.