We continued our journey along the South Australian coastline staying overnight at Mambray Creek campsite. A short walk in the morning meant a meeting with some of the local wildlife.

A number of kangaroos bounded across the track…..

and then we spotted a rarely seen Yellow Footed Rock Wallaby watching us from a safe distance.

A goanna about 2m long strolled past

and had a good look at Matt and Kathrin.

Kookaburras watched us from the gumtrees and had a bit of a laugh.

Later we packed up camp, finished our drive to the launching point and prepared the kayaks for a paddle 9km offshore to visit some small rocky islands and the White Rocks Sea Lion colony. As we left the protection of the bay the headwind increased to above 15 knots making for a rather wet paddle.

We punched into the head winds for a few kilometres before sheltering from the wind at a low rocky Island. Our efforts were rewarded as we watched the Pelican chicks being fed by their parents, although being downwind from the colony made for an interesting aroma to accompany my energy bar snack.

The colony was quite busy with the Spectacled Pelicans rearing young as well as large numbers of Pied Cormorants nesting nearby.

The young chicks were estimated to be around 30-45 days old with their feathers not yet fully developed.

Paddling another few kilometres we reached the protected side of the outer islands and hugged the coastline until reaching a remote sheltered bay where we camped for a couple of days.

At about his time the Lumix waterproof camera decided to stop working and we discovered that I had left the battery for the spare Canon waterproof in the car. So Matt and Kathrin’s encounter with 30 or so sea lions at White Rocks went unrecorded.

They had paddled out to the Sea Lion colony late in the afternoon and were rewarded by a group of 30 Sea Lions coming into the water to investigate them. They swam and jumped around the kayak, dived under it and generally made friends. The video would have been awesome !!

But we did get some nice photos of Matt’s attempt at hopscotch and the hazy sunset.

Our return journey to the mainland a couple of days later, started soon after dawn to race an approaching weather front. We paddled the last hour of the trip with the wind gusting well over 25 knots beam on, making it quite an interesting paddle. Again I was happy to be paddling the Seaward Passat G3 double which gave us a very controlled and mostly dry ride.