Hanson Bay | Murray Foote

Kangaroo Island, South Australia, 9 July 2024.

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Eastern Great Egret.

On our last full day on Kangaroo Island was fairly leisurely with visits to a few nearby locations. This is at South West River, Hanson Bay.

Hanson Bay.

Can you see the cormorant at the end of the squarish rock outcrop in middle distance? Umm. Maybe not.

Cormorant, Hanson Bay.

Here it is though, taken from the same viewpoint as the previous image. It’s a Great Cormorant, which is kind of appropriate because it’s in a great location. There is also the head of a silver gull poking up above the rocks on the left, that you will just be able to see.

I took this with a very long telephoto (1260mm full-frame equivalent) and the previous image with a wide angle lens (35mm).

Rocky River.

We are now behind the old temporary visitors’ centre. This is potentially a place to see platypuses though likely in low light with a lot of patience. (The plural of platypus is not platypi because the name comes from Greek, not Latin).

Large xanthorrhea, Rocky River.

In flower, this would have a spectacular stalk.

Rock formation, Rocky River.

We are still on the Rocky River, but about six kilometres downstream and approaching the coast. We are now on the Snake Lagoon Track.

Lots of interesting strata and formations in the river itself.

. .

Eroded cliff on the other side of the valley.

I suppose this beach must be Snake Lagoon.

We didn’t see any snakes. The only snakes on Kangaroo Island are the Black Tiger Snake and the Pygmy Copperhead. Most of the top ten dangerous snakes in the World are found in Australia and number three, the Eastern Brown Snake, lives over the back fence where we live in Canberra and occasionally comes into the yard. That doesn’t mean snakes are particularly dangerous because we are not their prey and they don’t have good capacity to deliver their poison to us. The most dangerous animals in Australia, in other words causing the most deaths, are in order: horses, cows, dogs, kangaroos, bees and sharks. Only then comes snakes, with 14 deaths in the last ten years, as against 77 for horses. You are also nearly a thousand times more likely to die in a road accident than from snakebite..

Getting closer….

Rocks and sea.

If you click on the image for a larger view, you can see Cape du Couedic Lighthouse on the headland in the distance. That’s where we had to return to.