There are so many naturally magical places in every corner of this country that I’m lucky enough to call home. It would be impossible to explore them all in one lifetime.
Of course, if money was no issue and responsibilities didn’t call, and we could spend our lives permanently on the road, maybe we’d have a chance, but that’s not the case for the majority of us.
Plus, I’m what they call midlife now, so I’ve left my run a little late anyway.
Given that, we have to meticulously hand-pick the places we most want to explore.
I’m not sure what exactly drew us to Kangaroo Island one such holiday, but I’m so glad it did.
While part of Australia, this place feels like its own ancient land, a distant and largely untouched wilderness where wildlife and plant life can thrive with little human interference.
I suppose the landscape still looks like Australia; the residents speak Australian English, and the currency is the Australian dollar, yet it feels somewhat foreign — not just physically detached from the mainland but entirely independent as well.
It’s a place with a rich history that, while its farmers and producers export world-renowned products across the globe, has managed to keep population growth and modernisation moving at a snail’s pace.
You won’t find a McDonald’s or a Kmart on the island, nor a grocery store that’s not independently owned.
And if you’re not organised, you might go hungry, and both you and your car might go thirsty after a certain time of day when everything has shut up shop.
We stayed in an Airbnb holiday house less than 10km from where we disembarked the ferry in Penneshaw.
Penneshaw, the main ferry port on the island, is well-serviced, so we could grab plenty of supplies before we headed to our seaside accommodation, where we elatedly watched dolphins swim by from the lounge room.
I mean, I don’t know how often you come across that, but I’ve travelled a bit in my time and have never experienced that before.
One thing about Kangaroo Island is you’ll have a hard time getting rid of your money.
I know that sounds nuts when you’ve got no big chain stores there with massive buying power importing mass-produced items to sell cheaply, but other than a few tourist attractions and ice-creams on the road, there’s not much to throw money at.
Yet, there are many attractions to see — they’re all just natural wonders of the world that cost you nothing but time to visit.
Sure, you could spend a bit dining out at lavish restaurants on fresh-caught seafood for every meal, but we didn’t really do that; we just cooked at our accommodation with supermarket and farm gate produce.
You can fly to Kangaroo Island or catch a ferry and then hire a vehicle or jump on tour buses to get around. Still, if you take your car across on the ferry, you have far more freedom with no limits to your exploration, no time constraints and no other tourists on board.
I don’t recall how many kilometres we travelled, but we zig-zagged back and forth over that pretty little island for a week, exploring every little nook and cranny that interested us.
From simply collecting shells on beaches, exploring cliffs around lighthouses and reading the history of shipwrecks and whaling there, to wildlife-spotting while bushwalking at Flinders Chase, getting blown away at Admiral’s Arch, posing and parkouring over Remarkable Rocks, seeing sea lions surf the waves into the sand at Seal Bay on an up-close wild seal encounter, sand-boarding and tobogganing at Little Sahara, swimming in Vivonne Bay’s turquoise waters, relaxing and fishing by the Chapman River, snorkelling, browsing markets and penguin spotting at Penneshaw, crab-hunting in random rock pools, hiking up the seemingly never-ending steps on Prospect Hill at Pelican Lagoon and drinking locally made cider, eating oysters at American River and stopping in to see the capital Kingscote (which happened to be the least exciting part of the island).
If you have limited time to holiday and don’t think a week is quite enough to visit a place such as Kangaroo Island, you’re mistaken.
You can drive from one end of the island to the other in a day, so you can imagine how much area you can canvas in seven of them.
Cape Jervis (where you board the ferry) is a nine-hour drive from Shepparton, so depending on how much driving you’re prepared to do in a day, you might need to take into account some extra days either side of your holiday and to coincide with ferry departure times, but if you don’t mind a drive and your kids travel well like mine do (and sleep through most of it anyway), that’s still a day trip in my book.
There is nothing like a hefty dose of nature to rejuvenate your soul, and Kangaroo Island has the biggest dose waiting for you.