Suffering from PTSD after our dealings with bureaucracy, we leave the caravan in Adelaide and take a 45 minute ferry to Kangaroo Island; if they aren’t hitting the vineyards, Kangaroo Island is Adelaide residents’ preferred weekend away and the greatest attraction is wilderness. That said, the island boasts a brewery (nah), a gin distillery (hell yeah) and a couple of vineyards (didn’t go). Six times the size of Singapore, Kangaroo Island, or KI to use the local term, has a population of just over 4,000 so overcrowding isn’t a problem.

We hear there’s spectacular scenery and we’re interested to see how the island is recovering 16 months after the devastating fires. About 46% of the island burned and roughly 50,000 koalas died – which explains why we see just one the whole trip, along with a handful of kangaroos. At one point we do stop to let an echidna cross the road. Why did it cross the road? Only the echidna knows.

We take the road to the south to Flinders Chase National Park – this is where we see Nigel no-mates, the koala, up a tree outside the visitor’s centre – clearly he’s on the payroll. The park was completely burnt out in January 2020 and the bush regenerates at different speeds and in different forms. For example mallee, a shrubby lower growing eucalyptus, regrows from the base, whereas some other varieties sprout new growth from their dead burnt bodies.

The long and curvy Cape du Couedic road in the park is an Instagram favourite but this article has before and after pics showing what was lost in the fires. We can see the regrowth now and it is hard to imagine how terrifying the fires must’ve been.

We take a long walk from the lighthouse down to Admiral’s Arch, a natural formation carved out by the sea. Stalactites hang down and frame a nice view of the ocean but I have to wonder at the sign announcing a Bush Fire Last Resort Refuge – you’d literally be between a rock and a hard place if this was your last resort. Tough decision, being burned alive or flinging yourself into the surf pounding the rocks. Let me think about it.

The energy of the sea and wind is visible in the way they continue to sculpt the Remarkable Rocks, which are one of the most recognisable features synonymous with KI. A series of massive granite domes stretch to the water’s edge where the Roaring 40s howl in from the Southern Ocean lashing the landscape and sculpting a bevy of designs that would make Rorschach weep.

It isn’t warm enough for swimming, even for those of us more used to Wellington temperatures, so we limit our beach adventures to walking – Stokes Bay is a hidden gem where the entrance isn’t obvious. You need to walk through and between an array rocks which, in places, are so narrow they act as a default body shaming space. Fortunately we make it through.