Review: Kangaroo Island Walking Tour with Park Trek (5 Days), SA

Top Oz Tours offers a great range of Australia walking holidays. You can book this tour here.

Please note: The summer of 2019-20 saw an unprecedented bush fire event on Kangaroo Island, which resulted in widespread destruction. The island is now in recovery and walking tours have resumed. You can read more about the recovery process here.

Like pieces of a sculptural installation that wouldn’t look out of place in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Kangaroo Island’s Remarkable Rocks perch on top of a large sandstone dome protruding from the landscape by the vast Southern Ocean.

Clearly the pieces originally fitted together as part of their own orb, so it’s almost a case of nature’s babushka dolls. Maybe there’s an even bigger dome lying in wait underneath.

Remarkable is the best way to describe our five-day Kangaroo Island Walking Tour with Park Trek Walking Holidays, which began with pick-up in Adelaide. Throughout our time on the island, we’ve seen several of its most beautiful and remote landscapes, soaked up breathtaking vistas at every turn, and enjoyed unparalleled wildlife viewing opportunities.

Watch our video of this experience: 

Top things to do on Kangaroo Island – The Big Bus tour and travel guide

Welcome to The Big Bus tour and travel guide. Looking for ideas for things to do on Kangaroo Island? In this video we join Park Trek Walking Holidays on a fabulous five-day short break hiking around Kangaroo Island.

Located 14 kilometres off the South Australian coast, Kangaroo Island is the third largest island in Australia (behind Tasmania and Melville Island). Referred to locally simply as ‘KI’, it’s one of those destinations that generally draws a rapturous response from a listener when you mention you’ve been there — particularly it’s fair to say, if the listener is from SA. OK, so they could be a little biased, but the reality is there’s a lot here to get excited about.

This tour includes comfortable accommodation, most meals, and guided daily walks. The walks are moderately paced and suitable for anyone of a reasonable level of fitness. As we explore the coastline, soaring escarpments give way to secluded sandy beaches and pristine coves. You will almost certainly see young sea lions body surfing the waves and having a lovely time. More on that a little later.

At the western end of the island, the Flinders Chase National Park offers a real diversity of landscapes, from eucalypt forest to low-rise coastal scrub. Highlights include the Hanson Bay Hike and a morning walk known as Snake Lagoon. The excellent Visitor Centre has lots of interpretive boards on the local ecology. They also do a mighty fine latte.

Back at the Remarkable Rocks, and except for two possible newly weds canoodling amongst the jigsaw pieces, we almost have the place to ourselves. That’s another theme running through this trip. We’ve hardly seen another soul on any of the walks we’ve done so far.

Human presence on the island has on the whole been rather sporadic. Kangaroo Island has been separated and rejoined to the Australian mainland several times. The last separation occurred around 10,000 years ago.

While there is evidence of human presence dating back around 16,000 years, there were no known Indigenous inhabitants here at the time of European settlement, which officially occurred in 1836 as part of the South Australian colony.

We get to experience a little of that pioneering way of life with two nights at the Cape Du Couedic Lightstation heritage cottages. Located right in the heart of the Flinders Chase National Park and built around the turn of the 20^th century, the lightstation was the home of the head lighthouse keeper, his assistants and their families.

Supplies would arrive by ship only once every three months and would be winched up the steep cliffs by flying fox. Any visitors would arrive in the same daring manner as the supplies! See the remains of the winch at Weirs Cove.

One night I step outside our cottage. It’s pitch black. The wind howls and shrieks around the covered verandah. You can only imagine what it would have been like living in this remote outpost for months on end.

There are actually some other residents in the hood. Down at Admiral’s Arch, just a short walk from the cottages, you can visit a colony of long-nosed fur seals. The colony’s home is accessed via a series of boardwalks. It’s possible to get extremely close, particularly to the pups sleeping high up above the shoreline as they wait patiently for their mothers to return from feeding in the shark-inhabited waters.

Speaking of wildlife viewing opportunities, for me, that’s what makes this trip so special. There are no foxes or rabbits on KI, and you can expect to see lots of native mammals — including the Tamar wallaby and Kangaroo Island kangaroo (a sub species of the mainland’s western grey). Koalas, platypus, and Cape Baron geese, while not native to the island, have been introduced for conservational reasons — and they all thrive.

The native bird life is also prolific and within just minutes of heading off on our first walk, we spot a pair of the endangered glossy black cockatoo. Beautiful finches and delicate honeyeaters abound.

The biggest highlight though is the sea lion colony at Seal Bay Conservation Park. Managed by National Parks South Australia, this is a truly magnificent experience. A ranger escorts our group down onto the beach and we are able to walk within metres of members of the colony — including large males and mothers with feeding pups.

It’s not uncommon for an inquisitive pup to wander up and investigate a group more closely. The animals are not habituated with food in any way and there is no interference in the life of the colony unless there is an issue caused by human impact (for example if a sea lion becomes entangled in fishing line).

As we farewell the Remarkable Rocks and take our leave, I can’t help but be amazed by this whole experience. Kangaroo Island is without doubt a remarkable part of Australia, and this Kangaroo Island Walking Tour is a wonderful way to see it.

The writer travelled as a guest of Park Trek Walking Holidays. You can book this tour here.

Browse our full range of Australian walking holidays here.

Additional images: Bigstock