We leave Adelaide at 6am in order to catch the 8am ferry to Kangaroo Island and its at least 90 mins to the ferry terminal. The ferry is very nice and even has a cinema room but the temperature is set to below freezing on board so we have to wrap up warm! For some silly reason we chose to sit on the freely rotating chairs and when the crossing got rough we soon found ourselves feeling a little queasy and glad to have our feet back on the ground on the other side!

We can't check into our accommodation just yet so we drive north on the island to a beautiful bay Emu Bay and spend an hour walking around. The weather is very clear and sunny but the wind chill is bringing the temperature down somewhat.

After checking in to our quaint unit in American River, we drive to Penneshaw (where the main Penguin colony resides) to find some dinner. It seems the island shuts down around 9pm and there aren't too many choices for food so we have a family size pizza between the 3 of us and some of it even lasts until the following day!

The real fun starts on day two of Kangaroo Island and we drive right to the other side of the island to Flinders Chase N.P. The weather is more overcast today and extremely windy on the seafront but that doesn't stop us walking down to see a New Zealand fur seal colony that you can smell a long time before you can see them!

On our way down to the seals, a kangaroo decides it wants to be the second to fall victim to the wrath of Dora (our car) but luckily she's in a good mood today and manages to stop in time! The island has only just been fully re-opened following two weeks of ravaging bush fires that damaged a lot of the bush and wildlife and the devastation is apparent at this end of the island.

After the seals, we visited the remakables. These are a group of rocks that sit on a cliff by the sea and have been uniquely shaped by the wind and rain over millions of years. It really is quite amazing to look at and admire these intriguing, natural sculptures.

As we make our way back along the coast in the direction of our accommodation, we stop at Hanson Bay wildlife sanctuary. A pathway lined with many eucalyptus trees is home to about 15-20 Koalas and, between the 3 of us and after giving ourselves neckache (!), we found 11 of them.

The weather improved as the day went on and the wind calmed down.

Seal Bay was the next stop and here we took a guided tour that enabled us to walk along the beach amongst the sealion colony that reside here. The sealions are huge and appear very lazy as they lay in the sun but they spend 3 days out in the ocean fishing before coming back to rest. This was an excellent experience and gave us the opportunity to be really close to the animals.

We stopped off at a honey farm for some tastings and ice cream before indulging in the local seafood from the take away in Kingscote. I went for the fishermans basket which included all sorts of fish and a large portion of chips.

At 8:30pm we left our accommodation on a wildlife tour that included spotting the big red kangaroos, tiny tamar wallabies and, ultimately, the penguins. The colony that live and breed here are the smallest penguin species in the world and they are very very cute. Sam, of course, was very happy and we all enjoyed every minute admiring these flightless birds. Unfortunately, you can't take pictures using the flash because it blinds them but the guides had special red torches that didn't have any ill effects.

We were all very tired after this full day of touring the island and taking in as much as we could but there's still more to do before heading back to the mainland.

After checking out, we drove to beautiful Pennington Bay. This is one of the nicest beaches we'd ever seen and could've spent more time enjoying the stunning weather in a perfect location but we had more places to visit first including Kangaroo Islands very own desert - Little Sahara.

Vivonne Bay - yet another gorgeous spot was next and we stopped here for a paddle following a yummy ice cream to cool us down.

We also found time to visit a eucalyptus distillery and a sheep dairy farm which included delicious tastings!

Before boarding the ferry we saw pelicans on the Bay of Shoals then, while waiting to board, the daily feeding of the pelicans at Kinscote was taking place.

The ferry journey back was much smoother and we finsihed our trip with a huge family meal at McDonalds.

Back in Adelaide we managed to sell Dora for 2/3rds of what we paid which was reasonable enough considering she was having a few problems then we said farewell to Mum followed by our own farewells to Adelaide the next day.

On our way to the airport (by bus because Ryan was working) we received a phone call from Virgin Blue (airline) saying our flight was cancelled and we could go on an earlier flight if we could get to the airport on time. They advised that we caught a taxi but they wouldn't pay for it so we continued on the bus. We didn't have long and we just about made it. The flight to Melbourne was fairly short and the weather was a mere 40 degrees!