• E N
R O U T E
STJ 5.4
ADVENTURE
SPECIAL EDITION
SPRING 2019
/ /
C O V E R
S T O R Y
ISLAND OF THE DEAD
KANGAROO ISLAND DANGLES OFF THE BOTTOM OF AUSTRALIA LIKE A TINY JEWEL FLUNG INTO THE INDIAN OCEAN.
KATH FOURIE EXPLORED SOME OF ITS DELIGHTS AND GOT MORE THAN SHE BARGAINED FOR.
“Whoa!” Ollie and Yvonne shouted
in unison.
“Did you see it too?” Ollie gasped.
“The blazing light that just whizzed
past her head?” asked Yvonne, a small
grey-haired woman wrapped in a crochet
blanket, wearing thick glasses. “Yeah, I
certainly did!”
I spun in my chair, peering out into
the pitch black behind me. There was no
48 // MAKE MEMORIES FOR LIFE
blazing light, not even an afterglow.
Yvonne cupped her hands to her mouth
and yelled in her thick Aussie twang: “If
you’re from the spirit realm, yer welcome
here, but if you have bad intentions – I can
take a guy with a knife, watch out!”
My friend Ollie, a gemologist, had
brought me to Kangaroo Island for a
camping trip. I’d already been travelling
Australia for six weeks when I arrived in
Adelaide, and Ollie insisted that I needed to
visit the 126-kilometre-long island, much of
it made up of national parks, to get a true
taste of the country’s natural splendour. A
few days later, on my birthday, we boarded
a ferry to cross the Backstairs Passage
strait to the small town of Penneshaw.
The flying-ball-of-light incident
occurred that evening, following
an afternoon spent exploring the