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plus, kangaroos for breakfast, parrots for lunch, and a rusty jinker

if you — a foreigner– were asked to look at a map of australia and guess which is the south coast, you might be tempted to guess it’s the one that runs along the southern edge of the country.

in which case you would be wrong!

in our quest to get to know our host country, we’re making regular reconnaissance trips. our first february excursion was to the south coast. we drove east.

perhaps a little context is in order. canberra –where we live– is an enclave completely surrounded by new south wales, australia’s most populous state. according to its internet page, new south wales…

“borders queensland to the north, victoria to the south, and south australia to the west.”

get that? victoria is to the south, south australia is to the west. and the south coast is to the east.

it gets worse, but this is no place for a geography lesson. this is about going to the beach.

our destination was north durras, which we’re happy to report is north of south durras. it’s a short walk to the murramarang national park, where we found two ancient beachfront rainforests on the mend after the beating they took from last year’s bush fires.

the abundance of green is encouraging, but it will be a while before the canopy grows back, making them function like rainforests again.

the birds are coming back, too. maybe a bit too much. we rented a little b&b-b (bed and beach, no breakfast). we were sitting out on the deck overlooking the ocean shortly after arriving when a handsome king parrot appeared on the railing next to my shoulder, looked me in the eye and began grumbling. i know grumble when i hear it.

“i’m cute,” he grumbled. “where’s my dinner?” then he flew to a nearby tree, expectantly.

pernille had noticed that there was a ziploc bag of seeds in the house, so she poured some onto a plate, and presto! we were popular again. our new pal returned in a flash, and the noisy crack-crack of his beak crunching open the shells was his acknowledgement that we had correctly interpreted his direction. we’re very trainable.

apparently, word spread fast through the animal kingdom. the next morning we not only witnessed a procession of parrots along the railing, but a mama kangaroo and her joey (youngster) were standing quietly in the front garden. they were shy at first, lurking behind a bush, but when i started peeling a banana, mama put aside her inhibitions.

i got the message. so i walked down the three steps and handed her my banana peel. she took it tentatively. then joey came up and demanded a bite. she let him have a taste. they both stood and chewed for a bit, then joey changed the subject.

“c’mon mom, let’s wrestle”, he pleaded, giving her a playful whacka-a-mom slap in the mouth. she responded with a good smack up-side the head, and soon the lure of food gave way to a good-natured game of kangaroo patty-cake. (anyone remember patty-cake?)

just as a test, i went to the kitchen, fished pernille’s banana peel out of the trash and offered it to them. mama roo scrunched up her nose. “no thanks,” she grumbled. i could almost hear her whiny voice saying, “we’re not fond of peels,” as she turned her head away.

and she bounded off, followed closely by little roo. i’m now advised feeding roos is poor form. it upsets their tummies.

next was the winged invasion, right out of alfred hitchcock. as lunch time approached, our fine feathered friends were lined up like aircraft waiting their turn at the runway.

the parrots led the charge, of course. with their bright crimson heads and forest green wing and tail feathers they look like they should be perched on captain hook’s shoulder. these rascals invited themselves to the table, and almost made off with the cheese before we asserted what little authority we could muster.

one of these little characters seemed to take a shine to a red solo cup. another one had an eye on my beer.

after lunch the parrots yielded to a team of cuckoo doves, which are really nothing more than pigeons with stunning brown- orange plumage.

then, the big bullies moved in; the sulfur-crested cockatoos that are destroying the trees in our canberra back yard, snapping off twigs and covering the deck with the detritus of the nuts they’re scavenging. when these scoundrels touched down, all the other birds fled.

in their defense, they are handsome devils, pure white with a sulfurous yellow hook-like crest accenting their “black and white TV” appearance. but the sulfur is a throwback to their origins in the nether world, and their ear-piercing screech is like a woman being hacked to pieces by a homicidal maniac in a hitchcock movie. beyond obnoxious.

what we were hoping to see, however, was the elusive lyre bird, so named because its elaborate tail feathers resemble the musical instrument of the same name. and as we were out on an afternoon walk, there he was, shaking a tail feather right in our faces.

the bbc’s david attenborough has documented how the lyre bird can mimic almost any sound, from a chainsaw to a human voice.

birds we had expected, but our next discovery was a real surprise: the remains of a jinker.

there was a time when this forest produced the finest spotted gum trees, prized for their height and the flexibility of their timber; brilliant for ship building and railroad sleeper cars. but how to get these massive trees to market? look closely at the pictures. jinkers were carts with giant wheels pulled by bullock or horse teams. timber from these trees made australia a prime shipbuilder in the early 20th century. and australian railway cars were the gold standard in luxury.

this being groundhog day (more or less), i was surprised to see my shadow, which i hope signifies six more weeks of summer. or maybe six weeks of summer, since we’ve hardly had any summery weather. we’d been told about the furious australian sun. “in a sunburned country” in the famous title of a book by bill bryson, who apparently already wrote the definitive australian travelogue. (so why do i bother?) but we’ve gone through december and january and a good bit of february and we still keep a sweater handy. hats we wear to keep warm as much as to guard against ultraviolent rays.

so yes, we went to the beach, but no swim. too darn cold. i waded out on a sandbar at one point, but the water never touched my knees. it’s high summer now and the forecast for the next week is for high temps of between 21-29 celsius (70-84 fahrenheit), and lows in the low teens (mid 50s) with substantial winds in canberra. good sleeping weather.

so g’day, mates who’ve stayed with the story this long.

five months here and i’m still trying to develop an aussie ear so i can tell the difference between the “a” in g’day mate and the “i” in vegemite.

i’m often asked, “how d’ya like the vegemate, mite?” it taistes grite.

and i can still see ya with my g’deye.

one last note. this tree at north durras has been at the same spot for years. so many captions come to mind. but haven’t found the right one. suggestions?

but kangaroo island does have a significant seal community, most of the world’s rare black cockatoos, a 1st class gin distillery, wineries wallabies wannabees & honey bees

american river is an enigma. a 15-star u.s. flag greets visitors to the town’s wharf, where a replica of the u.s. schooner independence is being lovingly crafted by a crew of volunteer shipbuilders. but there are no americans living here, and truth to tell, there’s no river. just a bay.

we had been drawn to the little village by mouth-watering stories of an oyster farm shop, but when we got there, no oysters. sold out. hungry, we discovered a little cafe on the wharf, but they were out of everything on the menu except cake. damn tourists, gobbling up everything.

the story of the schooner is a bit sketchy, too. as the brochure tells it, the independence was the first ship built in what is ‘arguably’* the first settlement in what later became the state of south australia.

ostensibly, a crew of seal hunters from connecticut, usa, showed up at kangaroo island in the winter of 1803, which was only 15 years after the first european settlers arrived on the continent, and when old glory only had 15 stars.

these americans stopped at the bay, which they seem to have mistaken for a river, and built themselves a two masted-schooner that was used for sealing operations. two years later, the ship was presumed lost with all hands while making her second voyage. so, for the past 218 years, there’s been no independence, either. the replica could be ready as soon as 2022, by which time they may have more oysters, and maybe americans.

hey, pssst, let me tell you the real story of the fate of the independence, based on a journalistic investigation. (believe me, i know about journalistic investigations.) according to recently unsealed documents, the americans had sailed around the island to seal bay and massacred scores of innocent seals to sell their pelts and blubber. the second time they came around, the seals were lying in wait. they ambushed the ship and lured it onto the rocks, where it broke apart and sank. the birds made short work of the sealer-sailors, and not a trace was ever found. my sources must remain anonymous. my lips are sealed.

today, thousands of seals come to the bay each year to celebrate their victory, lounge on the environmentally sustainable solar-heated rocks, and birth their young. in fact, seal bay is kangaroo island’s premier tourist attraction. (open 9-5 every day except christmas!)

kangaroo island also features a one-room schoolhouse that has, you guessed it, no students.

the old schoolhouse is well worth a visit. it’s been completely restored just as it was when it was operational in the 19th and early 20th centuries, right down to the “rules for teachers” posted on the wall, which make it abundantly clear why it closed. no teachers. who’d take that job?

one thing k.i. does have, however, is birds. some rather rare and unusual birds. there’s even a sign warning motorists to look out for penguins. i guess there’s no need to mention that we didn’t see any.

pernille’s passion for ornithological wonders was perhaps the main reason we chose k.i. for our holiday. so i was resigned to a day of driving from place to place, looking up into trees and hoping we’d catch a glimpse of some of the rarest and most elusive birds on the planet. pernille in particular had her sights set on the glossy black cockatoo. there are only about 400 of them in existence.

we engaged the incomparable ron swan to guide us to bird hideaways. and sure enough, within the first hour ron had led us to a grove of tall eucalyptus trees where a pair of glossy blacks was perched in the highest branches. pernille was ecstatic. she couldn’t wait to get back to our b&b to tell our hosts, pierre and branka, about the sighting.

the following morning, as we were having breakfast, our next door neighbors summoned us to their back yard, where they have a casuarina tree. there, we discovered “the curious case of the casuarina congregation of cacophonous cone-cracking cockatoos’ “.

to make a long story even longer, it turns out glossy black cockatoos have a casuarina seed fetish. a group of six or eight of them were perched in the tree, noisily cracking the cones and crunching the seeds. they seemed to find it amusing to plop the broken shells on our heads. but hey, it’s not every day you get to see a glossy black cockatoo close enough to take a picture with a plain old cell phone camera. so we let them.

our friend ron also knows where the island’s reclusive ospreys have their nest. it’s not much of a secret among locals. the nest was first sighted in the 1860s in d’estree bay and is quite prominent at the tip of a rocky peninsula.

for you ornithologists, pernille saw 17 birds she hadn’t seen before, including the elusive hooded plover and a night heron asleep in his daytime hideaway. well done, ron.

our island explorations turned up a few unexpected finds, such as the k.i. brewery (meh), and the k.i. spirits gin distillery (yeah!) our favorite: the mulberry gin. over ice with a sparkling guava drink. it’s a knockout. literally. i never thought we’d be gin aficionados, but this stuff is nice.

we also visited some of the island’s wineries, one of which is set on a cliff overlooking a spectacular vista of a valley plunging down to the sea. it did seems a bit peculiar, though, that among the vast expanse of acreage, there were, yep, no vineyards. we left scratching our heads, wondering where they get the wine. on the other hand, it seemed a sin to plow up such a gorgeous valley to grow grapes. so we’ll give them a pass. no journalistic investigation. after all, they must have some vineyards somewhere.

and one last thing before we go. ants. k.i.’s got ants. “ants with attitude” as one website called them. our man ron swan showed us an actual ant highway adjacent to his yard. thousands of ants were marching along, just like in the dave matthews song.

k.i. has several species of ants, including mildly venomous jack jumper ants and sugar ants. an internet search turned up some interesting facts about k.i. ants. for instance, did you know that sugar ants have a ‘penchant for pee’?

according to a university of south australia research team, sugar ants prefer urine to sugar. the team concluded that the sugar ants’ taste for urine could play a role in reducing greenhouse gasses. so beware, next time you step on an ant, you could inadvertently be contributing to global warming.

and one more last thing. wallabies. we hadn’t seen a wallaby, but we discovered our host, branka has a friendly wallaby that she feeds. he seemed unconcerned as we crept to with a few feet for a photo session as he munched on a cabbage leaf.

and one final last thing. bees. there is a place called island beehive that has quite a story. they produce something called ligurian bee honey. we didn’t go. maybe next time. this sign has nothing to do with the beehive. i think i saw it hanging over a urinal somewhere.

so farewell kangaroo island. you showed us a lot more than you didn’t. and you’ve got soul. a year on from disaster, you are thriving. and unforgettable.

we love your signs.

* “arguably” is one of my favorite weasel words, words that allow journalists and fraudsters to allege something without any evidence, and when it turns out to be false, they can “argue” that it was only speculation.

bushfires have played a crucial role in shaping australia’s ecology for millions of years.

the original intent of this post was to take a lighthearted look at how one tiny australian island is roaring back after half its land area was blackened in last year’s bush fires. but as sometimes happens, the story took on a life of its own.

the main character in the story is mother nature, which is in riotous growth mode after a rather rough patch in oz. the story, however, is set against the backdrop of the difficult discussion australia is having as it grapples with two intertwined challenges; the increasing intensity and destructiveness of bush fires; and the emerging reality that australia’s european settlers disrupted a land and fire management system that sustained the balance between man and nature for tens of thousands of years.

so as australia reckons with its past and evaluates the adaptability of indigenous methods to 21st century challenges, the circle of life (remember ‘the lion king‘?) goes humming along,

exhibit A: kangaroo island (k.i. to the locals) is a treasure trove of biodeversity located off australia’s southern coast. k.i. is about the size of luxembourg. (it’s visible in the satellite imagery above, a brightly burning dot about halfway down the inner coast). the island’s western half is mostly wilderness, home to a smorgasbord of endangered species, many of them found nowhere else.

lightning strike fires burned large swathes of australia to a crisp a year ago. clouds of smoke and a blanket of ash smothered the country. breathing was an existential risk.

it was a time of superlatives. we were told the fires were “unprecedented anywhere in the world”, temperatures were the hottest, damage was the greatest. entire native species were wiped out. experts estimated a billion animals died. and that’s not counting fish, bats and frogs. apocalyptic predictions dominated the news.

observers from abroad seeing news accounts could be forgiven for confusing australia with hell; a blazing inferno down below where cuddly koalas and kangaroos were being barbequed to extinction.

n.b. this is not intended as a rant about the pathology gripping journalism. if journalism is the first draft of history (god forbid!), this is the second draft. the longer view.

and now, meet mr. long view, ron swan. ron is a walking kangaroo island encyclopedia, not to mention a bush country chef.

ron makes his living introducing visitors to the hidden wonders of kangaroo island. he’s damn good at it.

he also knows a thing or two about the ecology of fire.

driving through a forest of charred stumps, ron pulls over to show us the life percolating inside. this one is a yacca (no, not yucca, you northern hemisphereans!)

yacca is the aboriginal name for what are commonly known as grass trees, though they’re neither grass nor trees. and the bark is not bark at all, (though it’s worse than its bite). ron shows us that the “bark” is made of tightly packed leaves. he then peels back a layer to reveal the inner core, which is very much alive.

to make a long story short, these species survive and thrive on fire. while the tops of the eucalyptus trees are destroyed in a blaze, the underground core re-sprouts from buds (lignotubers) stored either deep in the stem or at the base of the trunk. this dance of fire and flora is one of mother nature’s wonders.

when europeans arrived in 1788, the people living on the land had a good working relationship with fire. we now know that these traditional custodians understood fire to be an inevitable force that must be managed, just as the flora and fauna had adapted. it was not so much that they had tamed fire. it was the other way around. they had learned from fire. the most adaptable (flora, fauna, humans) survived and thrived. the rest are now extinct.

some contend we’re facing another extinction crisis today.

on the extinction/survival scale, kangaroo island is showing its mettle, rising like a phoenix from the ashes. almost all its 4400 residents live in the eastern half, which was spared by fire. in the west, where the flora and fauna of the spectacular flinders chase national wilderness park was a near total loss, the terrain is again verdant.

most of the park’s major attractions are intact. one famous lodge was destroyed; but others, like the magnificent lighthouse, admiral’s arch and remarkable rocks, three great photo ops, (we couldn’t resist) were untouched.

another tourist favorite, the koalas, were decimated by the fires. but peggy rissmiller, co-founder and resident scientist at K.I’s pelican lagoon research and wildlife center, says there are 25,000 of the teddy-bear like animals remaining. and they’re a nuisance, she says, an invasive, fast-breeding species playing havoc with the island’s delicate ecological balance.

dr. rissmiller, an american, prefers to work with her echidnas, spiny little creatures that were also fire victims. they’re native to the island, and endangered. an article about her work with these rare monotremes (mammals that lay eggs) is titled “what animal has a four-headed penis and produces puggles?” it’s a must read.

amid fears of a fire-filled future, the government named a royal commission into national disaster arrangements. the commission’s 578-page report is a disaster planner’s bible. in a sign of the times, it includes a chapter on indigenous land and fire management practices, but commission chair, air chief marshal (ret’d) mark binskin regrets that there are not enough “cultural fire practitioners” to implement the concept.

it will take time to recover and institutionalize the traditional knowledge lost over more than two centuries.

eventually, the idea is to mesh cultural burning with modern techniques to develop a strategy to meet the challenges of hotter temperatures and a growing population.

the good news is that, after a season of searing temps and unhealthy air, much of australia is experiencing a cooler and wetter year; a time to heal its burn wounds. it may turn out that by the time the country’s pandemic-shut gates swing open to foreign visitors again, the country may be well on the road back to normal; whatever the new normal may be.

it has also provided a much needed time for rethinking the relationship with flame. the continent’s european settlers brought with them a fear of fire. they could not comprehend the fine art of land and fire management possessed by the original occupants.

now the eyes of understanding are opening, and as mother nature heals her wounds, a cultural healing is also underway. the wisdom of indigenous fire practitioners is no longer ignored. it is revered.

that cloud of smoke australians were choking on a year ago may have a silver lining after all.

the 20-year old toyota landcruiser roars happily as it bounces along a mountain goat trail through australian bush country. it’s exhilarating riding shotgun with reuben gregor, son of our hosts on kangaroo island, as he powers up a jagged rock face, downshifts into a gravel-strewn gulley, then grinds upward again to a promontory overlooking a craggy beach.

they don’t make SUVs like that anymore. the odometer shows 286,000km

the last hundred meters’ descent to the water would be suicide by car, so we all clamber out and do a slip-and-slide down a rocky slope to a sliver of white sandy apron separating the cliff face from the swirling surf where we hope to snorkel for abalone and crayfish.

welcome to kangaroo island’s south coast. next landfall, antarctica.

it’s not a day for snorkeling, at least not here. we had brought wetsuits to brave the 16 degree celsius, (60F) water, but crashing waves are stirring up the rock pools. visibility is near zero.

ruben is apologetic. he says there’s another cove just a few kilometers away that’s better protected. we’ll have to walk, though, because even the land cruiser can’t negotiate those cliffs. and there’s no trail. not even a kangaroo track.

reuben knows the territory. he has worked these cliffs trapping feral cats that are a menace to the island’s indigenous species. he’s wearing solid walking shoes and socks.

reuben’s cousin, michael, is psyched for the hike, too. but he’s wearing flimsy flip-flops. big mistake.

my sandals offer some protection against the gravel and thorns. by the time we reach the third crest, however, i’m agonizingly aware of a strategic blunder. i’m listing badly to starboard under the weight of a gym bag stuffed with gear i had packed in preparation for any eventuality… except this one. my one “good” shoulder is on fire.

with every step i’m thinking, if it’s bad now, what kind of hell awaits on the way back. michael, it turns out, is wondering the same thing. his feet are being shredded by razor-sharp stones turning his thongs to mincemeat. the prudent course of action is obviously to swallow our pride and turn around. so after an hour and a half of bush-bashing, we’re back to where we started. no joy.

after two hours of cooling our heels, made bearable by the picnic michael’s wife caroline and reuben’s wife tracy had packed, we see three tiny dots rise up over the horizon. as the sun sinks low in the afternoon sky, reuben, along with michael’s 14-year old daughter sarah (who borrowed her mom’s boots) and sade, another young woman in the party with good shoes, straggle back to base, triumphant.

reuben hoists the booty tub up to michael, who swings it around for us to examine the prize: five massive abalone and one crayfish. the ladies proudly show ’em off. michael reckons each one of these beauties would fetch $100 at market.

ultimately, it’s been a grandly successful day. reuben has put food on the family table, thin-sliced and pan-fried. a feast for the land lubbers back home.

it wasn’t an easy task, he admits, because he’d forgotten the sharp knife he uses to liberate the abalone from the rocks. his only blade was a tiny shard strapped to his belt. fortunately, it worked.

for me, the day was a mixed blessing. to add insult to the injury of my miscalculation, i found that a large bottle of sun screen that was in my bag had burst open during the trudge. everything was slathered in white goo. spf 50+, too. it’s now thoroughly protected.

on the other hand, i could not imagine a better way to experience real australia. how many total strangers are privileged to be invited into a fun-loving, seafaring, welcoming family like the gregors and hobbses, who accept me as one of their own for a wild seacoast diving expedition and picnic? you can’t buy that.

there’s a moral to the story. when in the bush, be prepared, and travel light. yes, it’s a contradiction; australia’s full of ’em. it’s up to you to choose. don’t ask me. i’m a bush moron.