It was an early start to the day as Bea and I prepared to leave the farm and head towards kangaroo island. We had a surprise visit from Judith at about 6am to say goodbye and then another one slightly more shocking from Sven lol. It was shocking because we were sat in the dark in the car about to start the car up and he crept up and started tapping on the windows lol.

In a way I will be sad to leave the farm but at the same time relieved it's over finally. Now, back to the new adventure. There are all sorts of random things in Australia that you hear about (for example the big banana in Coffs harbour) but I never thought I would see a giant pair of cherries randomly outside a farm on the way to Cape Jervis. Photo worthy of course lol.

We arrived at Cape Jervis with time to spare and I drove the car on to what was going to be my rockiest ferry to date. This one even beats the one on route back from Phi Phi! I was having a whale of a time, laughing and wishing I was sat on a swivel chair as more and more people were moving towards the back of the boat looking slightly pale. My only downside is that I saw someone throw up just as we were going back to the car deck...I thought I had escaped that but obviously not. Bea and I had arrived in Kangaroo island to discover it was raining, quite badly. The first stop was at the visitor centre to be greeted by a lady who looked at us like we were mental once she found out we were camping on the island.

It was a rainy day so we decided to do things which would be indoors. The first place we went to was the Emu Ridge eucalyptus, wine and cider distillery. It was alright, the lady was really friendly and she let us watch a video on how they make it for free instead of charging us the tour price and we then went and tried some cider. It was good, not too dry but only manufactured on kI. Although the lady said that the guy who makes it often comes to Adelaide so if I wanted a carton then he keeps some at his house! I thought winner! If only I was staying in the area lol. I think Bea was a little bit disappointed that they didn't have any wine tastings but its winter so they'd never use the full bottle. The eucalyptus and honey sweets were interesting and I couldn't believe how many 'remedies' eucalyptus is supposed to aide.

Next up we went down to Cliffords Honey farm. Once again a nice little business and the lady in there was very talkative with us. She told us there were some samples to try and we could watch the honey harvesting video and then see a hive of bees behind some glass. The video was boring as hell (can't believe they sell it at about $20 a pop) but the honey was excellent! It was interesting to see the bees in action behind the glass hive and I learnt that I liked the Spring honey as its much lighter but still just as sweet. I then asked if we could try some honey mead. It was 12% which apparently was light...a bit on the strong side for me but guaranteed to get you legless if you had a whole bottle lol. Bea bought some honey and I bought some chocolate honeycomb and we moved onto the next place which was KI Spirits.

This place was excellent! I realise this entry isn't finished yet but this place turns out to be the best one we visited today. The guy was wonderful, he chatted to us about things he was making, new stuff not hit the shelves yet, let us try everything we wanted and didn't grumble when we didn't buy a single thing! I will admit though I had a couple of tastings which were absolutely horrible...but never mind lol. He got chatting to me about gin (Hendricks in particular) and how he's making some new flavours. I never knew there was a spirits competition held in San Francisco every year but apparently there is since some of their bottles had come either 2nd or 3rd in their categories. We said goodbye to the nice man in KI Spirits (after a sobering coffee...) and headed to the Pure island dairy.

Now I was really looking forward to this as the website made it sound wonderful, however, I was a little disappointed. The tour was over $6 and you got to taste a small bit of cheese and see the sheep being milked through a window...that was it. You never got to see the lambs or feed them, there are some older sheep outside which we stroked as one of them was being nosey but that was it. The only plus side was that I discovered I like Manchego but can't buy any as we don't have a cooler!

We were heading into mid afternoon so decided to head into a very windy Kingscote. This is one of the major towns on the island and during the summer I imagine it's a dream...but...in the winter...by god that wind was cold! Didn't stop the mass of pelicans down by the harbour though. We ended up going into the honey place in town and tried a few honeys but I didn't like it. It felt too over commercial and god knows what they show you on the 'tour' if you can see most of this at Clifford's for free. The only amusing thing was the giant bee outside the shop.

After the excitement of the day we punted it to Stokes bay on the north of the island to camp there for the night. Judith was right. Stokes bay is absolutely beautiful. We went walking on the beach before it got too dark and then set up camp. Only to have some extra company. A possum (my first one I've seen in the wild) was stalking our kitchen lol. Also a kangaroo which made a very aggressive noise once or twice, indicating we should stay away! Not too bad for our first day on the island.