Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [26]
Her best hope, it turns out, is Adelaide, which serves as the gateway to nearby Kangaroo Island, a ninety-mile-long oasis in the ocean set aside in large part as a nature reserve for Down Under species. Eager to enjoy the South Australian wines, Bill cheerfully accepted the provincial city as a stop and booked both of us to Kangaroo Island on a nonrefundable day-trip package with airfares included. Unhappily for him, when the appointed day arrives, he wakes up with a horrible cold, the result, he suspects, of the overnight ordeal of getting here from Bali two nights earlier on a sleepless red-eye flight involving an extended 4:00 A.M. stopover in Darwin. Bill decides that Cheryl should go alone on her wildlife quest. “I don’t want to risk eardrum damage on a plane”—a close friend of ours went deaf in one ear from that—“and I should probably rest and conserve my strength.”
Bill stays true to his word, leaving bed only to hand-wash his laundry and to seek out a pharmacy and fast-food lunch near our small downtown business hotel, the Rockford. Cheryl has a much more exciting time with Ron and Phil of Adventure Charters, who take her and six other people in an all-terrain Laingley to explore the middle third of Kangaroo Island. The outing fulfills all her lifelong aspirations, as she indicates to Bill repeatedly over the next few days in stories filled with exclamation points.
The tour guides, who refer to the rest of the country as “the northern island,” focus in the morning on the marvels of the eucalyptus forests, which flaunt eight hundred varieties of the stately native tree and such splendid birds as glossy black cockatoos and the scarlet parakeets called rosellas. When Cheryl brags about spotting three koalas in the branches, Bill teases her about the feat. “Aren’t there thirty thousand koalas on the island—so many, the authorities are sterilizing them and may start culling the herd?”
“Yes, that’s true, but seeing three is good because they are solitary animals that avoid people! So phooey on you.”
Kangaroos, as you might expect, abound on the island named for them. As they drive around, the group comes across some hopping through open fields and even more grazing in the bush, leaning back on their tails between bites. “Once,” Cheryl tells Bill, “when we rounded a corner, there was a big ’roo standing upright beside the road, just like he was hitchhiking!”
“Probably trying to get away from the swarming koalas.”
For lunch, Ron and Phil prepare a cookout picnic for their charges, frying fillets of freshly caught whiting over a propane fire to serve with crusty potato wedges, a green salad, and a selection of local cheeses and wine. Cheryl uses the break to get acquainted with the only other Americans on the excursion, a couple who happen to live part-time in our hometown. She makes plans to get together with them during the December holidays, right after our return from the trip.
In the afternoon the tour continues to Seal Bay, populated by sea lions rather than fur seals. To remain unobtrusive, everyone crawls across a stretch of beach to watch the animals lolling on the sand and playing in the water. “Guess what they eat,” Cheryl says to Bill.
“Tuna-fish sandwiches?”
“No, smart-ass. They gobble whole crustaceans, shell and all. After munching on a lobster or similar creature, they chew rocks to break up the shell they swallowed and then regurgitate the stones!”
“Now that would have been a sight worth seeing.”
Bill thinks the same, and Cheryl agrees, about the Adelaide Hills and McLaren Vale wine regions, both in different directions from Adelaide than the Barossa Valley and even closer to the city. In the heart of the