I am in the thick of one of those moments city dwellers like me truly relish. Against the inky dark sky, my senses are heightened to the comforting sound of curling ocean waves and the night breeze, which float gently into our accommodation. As I tuck into a bowl of home-made cauliflower soup, there comes a faint, scratching noise—tap, tap tap, like nails rapping on glass. Tamsin Wendt, my host at Oceanview Eco Villas on Kangaroo Island, turns towards the door with a grin.
“It’s Chilli and Bingo,” she pronounces, reaching her hand out to the female kangaroo and her little joey, who had only left the pouch the night before. “Definitely your lucky night.” The marsupials, who live on the 202-hectare property, nudge her hands and sniff warily at me. Chilli and Bingo linger on our back porch for a couple of minutes before hopping off after realising food is not to be found here. I blink, hardly believing that I had just interacted with kangaroos in the wild.
“The island, as you can see, is pretty special,” says Tamsin, gesturing around her. “There are no dingos, rabbits or foxes on the island. The flora and fauna you see is what South Australia looked like prior to the European Settlement. There’s nowhere else like it in Australia.”
“You’ll see over the next few days, you can drive for 10km and not pass another vehicle. In the middle of summer, you can go to a beach and not see another person there.”
It’s the unexpected magic of the wilderness that makes Kangaroo Island in South Australia one of the most remarkable places on Earth. Known as the Australian Galapagos, koalas rest in abundance in lush eucalyptus trees, while kangaroos, echidnas and bandicoots lurk all around. Driving through the island is reminiscent of a game drive because you will almost always chance upon an animal. When cars are pulled over on the side of the road, it often means a clear sighting of a koala up in a tree. Becky Westbrook, my effervescent and knowledgeable guide from Kangaroo Island Touring Company, is a genius at locating them from miles away.
I have the pleasure of spending two full days with Westbrook, a mother of three who grew up on Kangaroo Island and has a passion for storytelling and the unblemished beauty of her home. She takes me down to Seal Bay Conservation Park On the south coast of Kangaroo Island one morning, home to the third largest Australian sea lion colony in the country. The sealions, most of them snoozing on the sand while soaking in the late morning sun, are only a couple of metres away from me. I watch one stare curiously at me from the dry upper shore before it galumphs slowly under a bridge. Bottlenose dolphins are rampant too, if you gaze down on the island’s clear, turquoise waters long enough. I try my luck once on Oceanview Eco Villas’ jagged clifftop, where I sit on a camping chair with a cocktail in hand, chasing the last rays of a wondrous sunset as I hope for a dolphin to surface. It doesn’t, buta pod of pelicans fly by in an arresting spectacle.
Australia’s third biggest island operates at a blissfully slow pace, and wonderfully rural, which attributes to its otherworldly charm. It boasts 4,416 square kilometres of land—six times the size of Singapore—and yet is home to just under 5,000 residents. Kingscote and Penneshaw are the two main townships on the island, with a modest showing of restaurants, cafes, shops and supermarkets. Westbrook tells me that basic necessities and day-to-day groceries can be done on the island, but specific wants—dental visits, facials or shopping for a wider variety of meats and seafood—are best fulfilled in Adelaide, a 25-minute plane ride or 45-minute ferry ride away.
Kangaroo Island is also home to the purest strain of the Ligurian Bees, which makes its honey incredibly sweet and floral, and some of the best I’ve tasted. I buy some for my mother-in-law, who raves for weeks about how the honey tastes like those from her childhood. She proceeds to buy another five jars online shortly after.
In 2020, Kangaroo Island experienced the effects of Australia’s devastating bushfires in its summer season. Almost half of the island was burnt, alongside homes, businesses, crops and wild animals. Now, fresh sprigs grow from the bushes and the native vegetation has regenerated itself—even with wildflower species that have not been recorded in the last 70 years.
I observe this especially at Flinders Chase National Park, a vast area of wilderness sprawled out on the west of the island as its unique bushland of hakeas, mallees and yuccas show healthy green patches. The National Park is where Kangaroo Island’s renowned Remarkable Rocks is located, a geological phenomenon crafted from granite and erosion over the last 500 million years. The bright orange lichen, red succulents and grand overhang of its formation is a breathtaking sight from afar. I creep in and out of the rocks as I start to make out recognisable shapes from what is in front of me. I happily spot a lion’s head and elephant trunk before crawling under an arched rock to gawk at the foamy waves below.
A few months ago, Lonely Planet named Kangaroo Island the number two must-visit region this year, after the Trans Dinarica Cycle Route. The travel guide book publisher attributed it to its stunning beaches, sumptuous food and wine and varied wildlife. I gladly concur, I think to myself, as Westbrook takes me down the longer, windier and more scenic route to Stokes Bay Beach—Australia’s best beach in 2023. The ocean glimmer like sapphires with the sun’s rays beating down on it as I gaze out the window in wonder. On the way, Westbrook spies a few more koalas and I step on a kangaroo carcass in my excitement to snap a close-up shot of a baby koala. I might usually have been distraught, but that moment is too wondrous for that.
Stokes Bay Beach takes me by surprise. Westbrook leads the way through a narrow headland of boulders—a scene straight out of an Enid Blyton novel—as I try to keep up. The passageway meanders up and down for a minute or two before I emerge onto the most pristine beach I’d ever seen. When she had told me this was one of Australia’s most prized beaches, I had imagined the likes of Bondi Beach in Sydney and not this isolated, dreamy stretch of golden sand.
A sheltered, crystal clear rockpool protects the beach from the pounding surf and also makes for an idyllic swimming haven for children of all ages. I spend a moment ambling down the shoreline, breathing in the gloriously salty air as the sun warms my pale skin. I have never wanted to dive straight into the ocean more than that very moment.
“We’ve been on the island 18 years now,” Tamsin laughs. She is the mastermind behind all the recipes at Oceanview Eco Villas. “We thought we’d be here for two to four years, but it got under our skin.”
Trained as a clinical psychologist, Tamsin and her husband Tim Wendt—a police officer at the time before joining his family’s jewellery business—decided to build Oceanview Eco Villas on their own land as a way of sharing their love for the island with others. Harnessing all of nature’s elements, the Wendts decided that the combination of luxury and sustainability would be their ethos for the two villas, and that started with going off-grid.
“We sought to remain within a small footprint and work on passive solar principles. Even on long and hot summer days, the sun doesn’t actually touch the glass, and with cross ventilation, the house cools down pretty quickly,” Tamsin points out. The couple made a conscious decision that 90 percent of their building material would come from within South Australia, from the creamy limestone walls in the living room to the plush dining room chairs. She adds: “The carpets in the bedrooms are one of my favourite features as they are crafted from ghost nets rescued from oceans around the world.”
The Wendts are also committed to creating a beautiful native habitat on their grounds. They started with planting over 1,000 native plants and bushes that are endemic to Kangaroo Island, and followed up two winters ago with a major revegetation project that added another 5,000 trees and plants over five and a half hectares. Their worm farm compost system also ensures all organic waste is dealt with on the property and turned into fertiliser.
My stay at Oceanview Eco Villas was an all-inclusive experience—a perfect way to unwind and be at one with nature. All meals are catered for by their team, from fresh fruit, yoghurt and eggs in the morning, to packed picnic lunches and a three-course meal for dinner in the comfort of the villa. Each of the Wendts’ two-bedroom, two-bathroom villas offers jaw-dropping vistas of Nepean Bay, which I enjoy from my king-sized bed.
For another top-notch accommodation option, Southern Ocean Lodge, by James and Hayley Baillie of the prestigious Baillie Lodges, is open again after massive reconstruction from the bushfires. Its 25 glass-fronted suites, named after shipwrecks on the island, boast calm, muted tones, a sunken living room and curved walls made out of local limestone. The Southern Spa is worth a visit, as is the in-house restaurant, even if you decide not to stay the night. I order a coffee after lunch and settle into the Great Room—the luxury lodge’s idea of a shared space to unwind—and admire the biblical views of the raging waves from the Southern Ocean crashing onto the 40m cliffs. To me, this is renewal and rejuvenation on a whole other level in a holiday destination. I spy infinity-edged pools against bushlands, which look utterly inviting, but those will have to wait for another visit.
