Kangaroo Island

Part Four – Stokes Bay & Chapman River

Australia’s most beautiful beach? Well, it is quite lovely, and very unique. The bay is divided by a headland; one side the beach is more rocky than it is sandy, the other is mostly soft white sand, but the only way from one side to the next is by going through the headland; pretty cool huh?

But I’m not sure about the most beautiful beach title. Still, I don’t know what the voting criteria is, so I won’t disrespect the judgment. Whether you think it’s the most beautiful beach in Australia or not, I’m sure you will agree that it is a great place to visit.

Peter took the opportunity to do a spot of kayak fishing on the bay. I sent him off with this simple request, “Bring me a good sized flathead back.”

So, Peter came home with a good catch of Wrasse, when I asked about my flathead, this is what he said.

“I hadn’t been out there long when I got a good strong bite. I pulled it straight in and it was a big flathead. I thought, Jo’ll love this. Feeling pretty good about my catch I killed it, gutted it, thought I’d better wash it and…well, lets just say, it was pretty keen to go home.”

The best ‘The one that got away story.’ I’ve heard for a while.

There’s another council campground here, no potable water, dump point or showers. But there were toilets and a coffee shop. There were also a lot of Kangaroos (the most we’ve seen since we arrived here) Tamar Wallaby’s (the cutest things you ever will see) and koalas. So…who needs water?

KI Kangaroos are smaller, darker in colour and with a longer coat than many of the mainland Kangaroos. We didn’t see many of them (not counting roadkill) until we reached stokes Bay.

The Tammar is one of the smallest wallaby’s and it has to be one of the cutest. With a longish grey/brown coat, big dark eyes and eyelashes to die for, these shy little critters are a pleasure to see.

We’ve seen so many Koalas while exploring South Australia, and Stokes Bay on KI was no different. We had a group of four koalas in the gum trees around our camp spot. I Never get tired of seeing these in the wild, even though some of these koalas look a bit…weird.

I was very excited to see this next bird, it’s a Hooded Plover, it’s estimated that there are only 700 to 800 of these in all of South Australia. I saw two in fact, and one juvenile. This little bird is one of Australia’s most threatened beach nesting birds. Their chicks have one of the lowest survival rates of all birds, so they are really doing it tough. I didn’t get too close to them, and they’re really fast, so the images aren’t great, but good enough. This link will tell you more if you’re interested. https://cdn.environment.sa.gov.au/landscape/docs/ny/hooded-plovers-yp-beaches.pdf

One of my favourite guls has become the Pacific gul, they’re a big bird, about three times the size of the common silver gul. We’ve seen quite a few of them, and I was lucky enough to see this one find a meal, and of course there are a few more birds to see as well.

While here, we took the opportunity to drive to King George and Snellings Beach and explore the Western River Cove area. We had a great day out, and both agreed that if we could have taken the caravan, we would have been happy to stay at Western River Cove.

From Stokes Bay, we made our way back to the Dudley Peninsula. We had a couple of nights at the Seafront caravan park in Penneshaw, where we had a great spot overlooking the ferry terminal and the Backstairs Passage (the strait between the island and the mainland). This gave us plenty to look at while we waited for the many, many loads of washing to be done. I even got to touch the full moon with my fingertip.

From there we headed to the Lashmar Conservation Park, and our campsite at Chapman River.

We absolutely loved our stay at Chapman River. The Chapman is only about 3klm in length. It starts inland, and runs out to Antechamber Bay, which is a beautiful stretch of beach. We made good use of the kayaks, did a spot of fishing, and just enjoyed the ambience.

The Chapman is a great river to explore, and when it’s calm, the reflections are amazing. Always one to really explore, Peter even managed to guide us up a storm outlet. Oh the fun. 🙂

We had five nights at Chapman River – but I think we’ll be back.

See you out there somewhere

On tow and on the go!