A road trip to Kangaroo Island (May 2025)

GETTING TO CANBERRA (Days 1 - 3)

It has been a while since I have posted on here. We have endured a LOT of rain in recent times and along with some health hassles (nothing major) life has been rather sedentry and very local for far too long! We decided it was time to take another trip, similar in length to our successful visit to Tasmania reported in earlier posts.

This time to visit daughters, partners and grand-children in Adelaide & Port Augusta since it is several years since we have visited, another casualty of COVID.

We allowed ourselves 28 May through to around the June long w/e. Deciding to explore along the way, we arranged to spend a few nights in Canberra to catch up my aunty who we have not seen for several years; a few nights near Bendigo; a few nights in Mildura before reaching Adelaide. Two weeks there broken by a week on Kangaroo Island and then heading back via Broken Hill.

So this will be the first of posts showing highlights along the way. I was looking forward to getting back into touch with birdlife, my hobby having been largely neglected for a couplse of years now. We will see, hopefully along with some different landscape than we are used to - one of the main reasons for the route chosen. Deb has not been very far west before ... so this was a first for her.

First day our destination was Uralla, via the Ebor - Armidale road from South Grafton after calling on my Aunty Val for a catch-up after her recent ninety birthday celebrations with mum & dad and a cuppa.

First photos to share then, are of the upper falls at Ebor, and then the larger drop lower falls. Plenty of water flowing after the recent rains - indeed, despite a clear drive, the drizzle started as we started our walk. What a great job they have done with the picnic area, viewing platforms and walkways for this location. 

Next is a series of shots around Uralla on a spectacular sunny morning showing off a glimpse of the autumn hues and one little bird (a fairy wren) peeking from deep in the branches as I took a walk around some of the streets.

In what was to become a regular feature of our drives, a coffee stop was taken not too far into the morning drive. Our second day saw that stop in Bendemeer. A treat just off the highway was the garden at the coffee shop - a wonderful complement to the coffee and food on a clear sunny morning, Even managed to snare a sulphur-crested cockatoo with its crest open way up on a dead branch. The bees were loving the gorgeous flowers too.

Later in the day, driving through the Bylong Valley, the weather closed in a bit and we had some more showers. As these next few photos show, though, the delights were still present with quite a clear rainbow, a field full of sulphur-crested cockatoos (with two galahs if you look caefully) and a stunning landscape with the black cows grazing a very green paddock with the brooding blue hills and dark sky in the backgound. Nature is spectacular!