After the FIRES

The bushfires of 2020 ravaged South Australia’s Kangaroo Island, scorching over half of its land. We return to see how both locals and the native wildlife are bouncing back on the cake came as I was being shown my villa. Tamsin pointed out of my window and declared: “There’s a kangaroo out there right now, and it’s very much alive.”

Sure enough, Kevin, as I dubbed him (sorry!), was grazing just a hundred metres away. After settling in, naturalist guide Nikki accompanied me for a slightly closer look. Chocolate in colour, the kangaroo brought his head up to peer at us as he became aware of our presence. Nikki told me he was almost certainly an old male seeing out his days.

“This is a good place for him,” she said, “as there is plentiful food and he won’t be disturbed.” She also explained that the kangaroos here are actually a sub-species of the western grey, having evolved separately to those on the mainland. “They have a heavier build and a shorter nose and ears.”

I was assured there were wallabies around too, and I kept looking for signs but hadn’t spotted any. However, when I mentioned them to Tim that evening, his eyes twinkled.

“They come out at night,” he said. “Let’s see if they’re outside.” He passed me an infrared night-vision torch, which wouldn’t disturb any wildlife, and sure enough, a mob of at least a dozen were grazing outside the window.

I woke to an overcast morning and the reassuring sight of Kevin the Kangaroo not too far away. Craig Wickham, owner of Exceptional Kangaroo Island, came to pick me up for the first of two days of exploration on KI. Craig was the winner of Wanderlust’s World Guide Awards in 2021, so I was particularly excited to have the opportunity to be guided by him. As we pulled away in his 4WD, I was full of expectation. And then the rain came.

South Australia was having a particularly wet and cool spring, and what was a light drizzle turned into a relentless downpour as the hours went by. Our first mission was to find koalas, the iconic mammal that became something of a poster child for Kangaroo Island during the bushfires as upsetting images of singed koalas went viral around the world, pulling at heartstrings.

We turned into a road bordered with bare trees – burnedout victims of the fires. Given the lack of vegetation, I was surprised to see that several had easily spottable koalas cradled within their branches.

“The new vegetation is growing below the trees, so they climb down to eat and then clamber back up,” explained Craig. Each koala was huddled against the rain and looking rather mournful, eliciting sympathetic coos from me. Craig wasn’t quite as sentimental: “Koalas are weird,” he told me. “They have tiny brains, one of the smallest of any mammal compared with their body size, and the surface of their brain is completely smooth – a sign of not being very intelligent.” Tiny brain or not, they were adorable.

Surprisingly, koalas are not native to Kangaroo Island; they were introduced here in the 1920s as a conservation measure after hunting and habitat loss had severely reduced their numbers on the mainland.They have thrived ever since, but had reached an unhealthy number. As Craig pointed out, the koalas were eating themselves out of house and home, and for all the devastation and sadness the fires had wrought, their population was now much healthier.

We drove on, and with my eyes now attuned, I kept spotting soggy koalas huddled in the trees as well as occasional glimpses of kangaroos and wallabies sheltering under bushes. As a mother kangaroo and her joey bounded ⊲

Keeping lookout (right) A tammar wallaby watches from atop Stokes Hill at Flinders Chase National Park. Kangaroo Island has the largest remaining natural population of these creatures in Australia