This is the fourth post in the series about TGS’ trip to Kangaroo Island.

IT WAS VERY WINDY on Saturday. We had a nice sleep-in before leaving to go to Flinders National Park. This park is named after Matthew Flinders, the English explorer who founded Kangaroo Island. We sat in the bus looking out while Rob told us about the bush fire this park had. The bush fire burned a big piece of land. We saw the big piece of land that was covered with brown grass. It was more obvious than the first piece of land we saw which has re-grown quite a bit.

We stepped out of the bus to walk to the Remarkable Rocks. The way there was really nice. We could see bushes and trees beside us. The Remarkable Rocks were indeed remarkable. It looked majestic and actually reminded me of Pride Rock from Lion King. When you’re standing on the rocks, you basically felt everything. You could hear the waves, wind, leaves rustling, etc. Some of us just stood still with arms wide open to take in everything. Some of us enjoyed climbing the rocks. Morning tea was nice as usual – coffee (or tea) and pie.

Our next stop was at Cape du Couedic Lighthouse. This lighthouse proved me wrong about few things. I’ve always seen an old tower with dim light in the middle of stormy nights when I think of a lighthouse. It might be because of the movies I’ve watched. Cape du Couedic Lighthouse wasn’t like that at all. It had a creamy color and the top was painted red and white. It was really cute, actually. It was a good sight for taking photos as Rob said.

We went to the Admirals Arch next. The pathway had curves to allow us to look at the sea in different angles and not to be too steep. We were allowed to explore around.

Gijs spearfishes on Kangaroo Island

Exploring Flinders National Park

The seals were hard to spot at first. Its brown color blended in well with the rocks. But when you spot a seal, you’ll be able to spot the others easily. There were lots of cute seals playing around. We walked deeper down and came to something that could be called the seals’ lounge – at least to me. The seals were relaxing everywhere. You could see seals playing with each other in the water and some just sleeping on the rocks. This place had a rock roof that covered the seals from the sun. It was very nice there. Rob told us about the differences between these seals and the sea lions we saw before. Seals mostly live among the rocks while the sea lions would live on the sandy beaches. This is because of the form of their flippers. We got to observe the different ways they walked with their flippers.

Charis walks on the sand at Kangaroo Island

Lunch was at the Visitor’s Center. We walked around in the center while Rob prepared lunch for us. There was a shop inside that sold almost everything – from lip balm to boomerangs. On the other side of the shop there was a room with information about animals in Kangaroo Island. You could have fun exploring in there. Lunch was really nice. We could look at the two big crows near us while eating.

The “koala hunt” took place at a place with lots of Eucalyptus trees. It was really shady and made me think about how amazing trees can change things. We walked around for a bit and took the bus to go to our last stop. On our way there, we also saw some wallabies and a kangaroo!

Our last stop was the Little Sahara Desert. It was indeed like the Sahara – all sand and sunny. We took off our shoes and walked to the big mount of sand. People were sliding down it. My first thought was that this was going to be extremely hard, but I have to go up to see how it looks like! So I walked up the hill with Pema.

TGS students in Australia

It’s really hard to try to climb up something when the things you hold on to just slide down. That could be a life lesson too, I guess. Sometimes, when we’re climbing up, we depend on others. Lots of times they let us go and we fall down. But we got to hold on to ourselves and keep moving up. I had a stop when I was tired, and continued moving up. When I finally got up, I knew it was worth it. You could see everything. There was sand everywhere in contrast to the other places in Kangaroo Island when all you could see were trees. It was a nice difference though.

A lot of us were sliding down the hill already. They were adding cool moves to it such as back flips and just rolling down. I was just sitting on the top enjoying everything. Then we were going to take a photo. Mark was very nice and took a photo of us even though he hasn’t been up the hill yet. My first attempt to slide down the sand hill failed. But I tried it again and totally jumped for it. I rolled down the sand hill. It was actually a lot of fun because you could feel yourself speed up faster and faster while you’re rolling. When you get to the bottom, you stand up and everything’s spinning really fast. I thought it was amazing.

We spent the rest of the evening just relaxing. Dinner was great. That night was the first night that I just sat down on front of my room and looked up to the sky. The stars were beautiful. It was a great ending to our last night in Kangaroo Island.