Tammar wallaby
Little Sahara
Koala sleeping
 
Baby koala asleep
Koala eating eucalypt
Brush tail possum at night
Our nice accommodation
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The next morning, I join the group coming from Adelaide for a 3-day tour of the island. We head straight off to hills to see a rare species of wallaby. This small cousin of the kangaroo is quite shy, but we see enough of him to be charmed by its gentle and discrete look. We watch them hop along beneath the trees, hearing the soft sound of their leaps. The long tour of the island then begins, on this island which is the third largest in Australia. After going to the western tip dominated by one of the three lighthouses, we clim a small hill called Mount Thisby, which let us have an overview of the island we are about to discover. It is barely inhabited and covered by a low vegetation of shrubs and small trees. We then clim the dunes of Little Sahara. As it name indicates it, this place is covered with sand dating from times when the ocean covered the whole region. For me, it's an opportunity to indulge in the mind blowing experience of rolling and tumbling down this white immensity, surrounded by green and blue, and simplified by the elements. After this sportsy moment, Kangaroo Island reminds us of how much it is a wildlife haven when we see dozens of koalas, alost one in every big gum tree lined up along an alley. Most of them are asleep on a branch, but some of them are eating or changing tree by quickly going down and climbing back up. We are all very happy to see them so active and from close, the mood getting even better when we arrive in the evening and find very nice accommodation. The rooms are new, with real beds and linen - my best room in Australia so far (even if I sleep on the couch to leave the beds to two Swiss girls). In terms of other tourists, we are all surprised there are 9 Swiss German people out of the 16 of us. The Germans and Swiss are on top of the buying power charts, as well as the heaps of Japanese in highly touristic places. Otherwise, we see a lot of British and Dutch, who reign supreme on places needing time to visit, since they often leave for a while to travel the world. There are surprisingly few Americans, a few Canadians and French. The evening is an opportunity for the typical barbecue of meat and sausages, then our excellent guide shows us some constellations and tells aborigene legends, which I'll keep in mind during the stary nights of the Outback. We easily spot an opossum in a tree, which wraps up a very full day.
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