Briefing: Adelaide and Kangaroo Island

So, I've been getting most of my reference material from two sources: Frommer's Australia 2006 and Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country. Yeah, I know the travel guide is two years old but it was 7 bucks at Half Price Books. I'm pretty sure all the information in there is pretty relevant and I can verify things if I have to on "the internets." Mr. Bryson's book, if you've never read him (you should), is hilarious. However, as funny as it is, he does frequently mention that Australia is a death trap. In almost every chapter he stresses, with many a horrific story, that Australia is the most beautiful, friendliest, awesomeness country that can kill you. It doesn't want to. It just can. He lists, several times over in fact, that the most toxic animals known to man make their home Down Under. Snakes (10 most deadliest), spiders (lots of them), paralysis ticks (kinda worse than Lyme disease), sharks (who can forget), crocs (of course), stingrays (R.I.P. Steve), blue-ringed octopus (venom can kill 26 of you at once), cone shell (a freakin' seashell!), and box jellyfish (God hates you)... just to name a few. Even the travel guide says you should be "wary." I'm not really gonna focus on this 'cuz I really don't want this getting around to my mother. She's been on prayer overdrive since she found out I was going over there and she's not even aware of half of the above mentioned items. So I figure her daily conversations with God will pretty much cover me not running into nature's wicked side.

So about Adelaide...
It is in the state of South Australia and has over a 1 mill in population. It brags about being the only city where it was settled by free English settlers instead of convicts. It has lots of parks, cool museums, fantastic Victorian architecture, and when German immigrants made their way down there, they brought their love of wine and making it, with them. So the city is surrounded by vineyards...*sigh* It's things like this that make you forget Australia can kill you.
It also happens to be the sister city of Austin, so it was pretty hippy-ish back in the day.

Kangaroo Island is about 68 miles south of Australia in the Southern Ocean (my third ocean!), 97 miles long by 35 miles wide (I'm thinking as big as Dallas-Ft. Worth),and it is the BEST place to see native Australian animals in the wild...the cute ones that is. Like kangaroos, wallabies (like a roo), little penguins (13 inches!), bandicoots (like a rat), echidna (like a hedgehog), sea lions, and platypus. Now a platypus is venomous, but it can't really kill you. Maybe hurt you real bad, but that's better than killing you. The island was actually the first place to be settled in southern Australia by free settlers, but later pirates, deserters and other miscreants from various English, French and American ships soon crashed the party.

There are also Koalas on the island. Lots of 'em. Now they aren't exactly native to the island, but 18 were introduced in 1920. Well, by 1996 there were 4,000 of them and they almost ate themselves out of eucalyptus trees and into starvation. They couldn't really relocate them so to help put 'em out of their misery, the government thought it would be best to shoot these cuties to oblivion. Governments have really great ideas sometimes. There was an uproar of course so they decided instead to snip-snip the cuddlies until the population stabilizes. I'm guessing that's what Boone's friend, the Koala spotter, does. He's making sure the little buggers aren't getting it on making babies that will the disturb the delicate balance of Koalas on the island.

So that's where I'll be for the first week. I can't wait!