Rain, rain, glorious rain. It's come at last and we're soaked and drenched and bright lime green. Dams full, reservoirs at 70%, tanks full and overflowing. Even some creeks flooding. Oh glorious water. It feels weird that when I was able to fill my pickle tank with rainwater during the odd shower over summer that I was blessed. Now with water everywhere (except our dying River Murray due to over-allocated water to farmers/irrigators) that little pickle tank seems like a mere drop.

More Kangaroo Island photos

Kangaroo Island...a special place

We spent a week on Kangaroo Island at the beginning of 2009. Our beach house is at Penneshaw a tiny little town on the eastern tip of the island (see photos from top of hill and South Australian mainland in the distance in the bottom photo). The trip takes about 45 minutes by ferry from the mainland (Cape Jervis). 

The landscape there is fairly wild. Soft muted greens, blues. Low rainfall and poor soils give the island a worn feel with wind-blown trees twisted and stunted like bonsais. The north coast is gentler whilst the south coast has nothing between it and the Antarctic so the seas are always rough, the coast wild and native bushland virtually impenetrable (see video of Pennington Beach - a wild surfing beach). 

Wild life is everywhere and the beaches go on and on. Beautiful sunsets are a nightly event and we feel blessed to just relax and take our dinner to a nearby deserted beach to sit and watch the sun set. Little dark brown wallabies inhabit the bush along with black Tiger snakes (highly venomous but very shy), kangaroos, echidnas, lizards and of course the island is now overrun with koalas. It's a wilderness with a wild history of sailors, smugglers and runaways who kidnapped Aboriginal women from the mainland and Tasmania (early 1800s) and used them as slaves. Tourism and food grown in pristine conditions are the main money earners. There's whiting, crayfish, oysters, sheep cheeses, honey from the only Ligurian bees now left in the world, some amazing wineries, including a Frenchman who's moved to Kangaroo Island and making world-class wines, free-range chickens - oh and the marron (like small crayfish) only freshwater from the dams and farmed.