South Australia’s Kangaroo Island & an Historic Aircraft in Adelaide

Monday, 28 April 2025

▲ Southern Ocean Lodge & Hanson Bay

Maureen and I spent four luxurious days – and nights – at the remote (and luxurious!) Southern Ocean Lodge on Kangaroo Island off the Australian state of South Australia over New Year 2008-2009. Eleven years later on 3 January 2020 the lodge was destroyed in the bushfires that swept across Kangaroo Island. It was totally rebuilt and reopened in late 2023. And in 2025, with an international group of friends, we returned to Kangaroo Island for a stay at, several of our experienced group commented, the best hotel they’d ever enjoyed. Yes, the food and wine was very good too!

◄ All the rooms are named after Kangaroo Island shipwrecks, the 53-foot-yacht Stormy Petrel went down at Cape Cassini on 21 December 1937. There have been an awful lot of shipwrecks around the island.

▲ Fire debris artwork in the lodge.

Want to know what the disastrous 2020 bushfire was like, well click here for the story in the Weekend Australian Magazine. Although guests and most of the staff were evacuated before the fire hit some of the staff stayed behind and sheltered in a bunker under the main part of the building as the fire swept across above them. The lodge had extensive fire protection and sprinkler systems, but it was not enough. The rebuilt lodge, which looks remarkably like it’s earlier incarnation, has even more extensive fireproofing including the ability to flood the roofs of the rooms, to counter the embers like the ones which landed on the roof and burnt through into the rooms below in 2020. The rebuilt lodge does not, however, have an escape bunker. That worked in 2020, but it might not have, the staff were lucky to survive.

Kangaroo Island is, of course, noted for its many kangaroo and at times it’s over-populated with koalas, but it also has notable fur seal and sea lion populations. In April 2025, however, it was a solitary dachshund which became the island’s most famous animal. Valerie escaped from its owners staying at an island campsite in November 2023 and went on the run for 529 days. Now let’s be honest, spoilt (that’s how the dog’s owners described her) dachshunds are not the sort of animals you’d expect to survive solo on a remote and rugged island and Valerie’s remarkable story captured media attention worldwide. Click here for her story in the Daily Mail

▲ Cape Couedic fur seals

Cape Couedic forms the south-west corner of Kangaroo Island in Flinders Chase National Park. Admirals Arch is spectacular and the rocky platforms, whipped by incoming waves are home to basking fur seals.

▲ Remarkable Rocks, near Cape Coudedic – OK, they really are reasonably remarkable!

▲ There are assorted walking tracks along the coast or inland from the Southern Ocean Lodge. On the trail to Hanson Bay or to the Kelly Hill Caves you cross this creek leading into the bay, hauling yourself across using a neat little cable-pulled boat.

▲ Kelly Hill Caves – A relatively compact, but quite attractive cave, complete with all the usual stalactites and stalagmites and a nice little sound-and-light recording. You can walk there from Southern Ocean Lodge in 2-1/2 hours or go by road.

▲ Just two months before our February visit I had another view of Kangaroo Island. Flying from Singapore to Melbourne in mid-December 2024 I woke up at dawn with Kangaroo Island making an early appearance to the west. I thought I might be able to make out early morning lights from the lodge, but we were too distant and the view was hazy.

▲ Adelaide Airport has one of Australia’s most historic aircraft, the Vickers Vimy biplane which made the first flight from England to Australia in 1919 – 28 days from London to Darwin. There’s a very similar Vickers Vimy on display at the Science Museum in London, that one made the first trans-Atlantic crossing from Newfoundland to Ireland a year earlier. The Adelaide Vimy used to be hidden away in a non-descript hangar a short trek from the airport terminal. It’s now much more prominently displayed a short stroll from the terminal and right by the taxi rank,

▲ Despite its much more convenient location the historic biplane is still remarkably easy to miss. It’s a shame it’s not right inside the terminal, so visitors could easily find it.