Sure Travel Journey 5.4 Spring 2019 | Page 49

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The beautiful sweep of West Bay and migmatite rock formations around Point Ellen.
“
Ollie insisted that
I needed to visit the
126km-long island,
much of it made up of
national parks, to get a
true taste of Australia’s
natural splendour
“
incredible cliff lines of Pennington Bay.
I had collected fossilised tree roots and
counted hundreds of starfish crawling
across the sand in the crystal-clear water,
and we had set up camp in the thick bush
of the dunes.
Ollie travelled with all his goods in a
hessian sack slung over his shoulder. His
most prized possessions were a cast-iron
pot and his thermos flask, from which he
drank carob coffee all day long. We had
marched over the hill to meet Yvonne,
whose land we were camping on, Ollie
lugging a beast of a carrot cake he had
baked to celebrate my birthday.
As the last light of the day slipped away,
we chatted to Yvonne, who pointed to
a high hill in the distance called Mount
Thisby. “What no one talks about is
that the Aboriginal people buried their
relatives’ bones at the base of that
mountain,” she said. “That’s why I live
here, to be closer to them. For some
reason, they like to speak to me.”
I chewed my cake slowly.
“Actually, this island is really called
Island of the Dead,” Yvonne continued.
“It was the colonisers who named it
Kangaroo Island.”
Shortly after this, the spirit allegedly
flew past the back of my head, and I had
to march off into the inky night to sleep in
a tent, alone.
The next day, we travelled to Vivonne
Bay, where we stayed in a dusty campsite
along the tea-coloured Harriet River. Ollie
taught me about the local geology, and
on a full moon we went to check out the
spectacular migmatite features – rock
formations made up of two distinct
components – around Point Ellen. Much
to Ollie’s delight, I nearly stepped on
a sea lion moonbathing on the rocks.
Having never heard the blood-curdling
roar of a sea lion before, I thought I was
being attacked by a lion of the African
variety. Ollie nearly wet his pants with glee
watching me scamper like Usain Bolt over
the rocks in one direction, while the sea
lion hightailed it in the other, roaring all
the way.
It turns out the island is called Island
of the Dead not because Yvonne could
chat with the Ancestors but because of a
Dreamtime story. The tribes of the lower
Murray River in South Australia believe
that when people die, their spirits follow
the same path that Ngurunderi, one of
the main Dreamtime ancestors, took to
Naroongowie (Kangaroo Island), and from
there they travel to the spirit world in
the Milky Way. Basically, the entire island
is a portal for spirits – and an incredibly
beautiful one at that.
I left Kangaroo Island a bit older,
not really much wiser, but filled with
adventure and the belief that I, too, would
return to this special place one day.
UNDER WITH
Q DOWN
SURE Sure Travel can customise
any itinerary for a magical Australian
adventure, including great flight deals
with SAA and Qantas. Contact your
nearest Sure Travel agency or call 0861
47 48 49 / visit www.suretravel.co.za.
MAKE MEMORIES FOR LIFE // 49