Camping? On Kangaroo Island?

Family and colleagues were surprised when I told them I was going camping on Kangaroo Island for two weeks over Christmas.

 

Why wouldn’t I want to go camping? It’s been incredible!

 

If I hadn’t gone camping I would’ve missed out on seeing a vivid blue Superb Fairy Wren checking out whether I’d dropped any delicious crumbs under my chair. And I’d have missed seeing the drab female wren feeding a morsel she’d picked off the front of our car to a youngster that was bigger than herself.

 

I would have missed seeing the sweet little Tammar wallabies grazing in the bracken each time I walked to the camp kitchen.

 

The terrazzo-patterned goanna, more than a metre long, wouldn’t have moved soundlessly through our campsite, because we would not have inconveniently pitched our tent in the middle of his path.

 

I wouldn’t have seen the native blue banded bee hovering around our campground. Nor would I have heard the one I almost squashed under the tent floor when I lay down on the mattress.

I certainly wouldn’t have noticed the industrious ant pulling a dead bee across our campsite and having to divert around the tent (‘who put that bloody thing there!’).

 

I would have missed the spider’s eyes glistening in the grass as I hiked to the toilet where I was fortunate not to encounter the snake someone had left a note about. Or be woken by the possum that managed to get onto our tent roof (how?).

 

Yes, I have to admit hiking to the toilet in the middle of the night is a bit annoying, and having to open up every window and door in the tent so that the wind won’t blow the thing away which means there is as much sand inside the tent as out.

 

And we’ve had to keep a eye on the Country Fire Service (CFS) app as from the day before we arrived there’ve been bushfires. Plus we’ve had a few days of ‘interesting’ weather (high 30s and very windy).

 

But experiencing the wildlife, and the peace is definitely worth it. And to my sister-in-law who has been enquiring whether my husband and I are still talking – yes we are and there’s been hardly a cross word the entire time.

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