Kangaroo Island

Aboriginal people lived on Kangaroo Island for thousands of years, when it was still joined to the mainland and after the sea cut it off, and stone tools have been found across it. Occupation appears to have ended some thousands of years before European arrival, leaving the island empty; to mainland Aboriginal peoples it is Karta Pintingga, the island of the dead. Matthew Flinders landed in March 1802 and named it for its kangaroos, and the French expedition under Nicolas Baudin, the first to circumnavigate the island, mapped much of it soon afterwards and left French names along the coast.

From 1802 sealers, whalers and escaped convicts camped on the island, a rough and unsupervised community that included Aboriginal women taken from Tasmania and the mainland. In July 1836 the first official settlers of the new colony of South Australia landed at Reeves Point, near present-day Kingscote, making it the colony's first European settlement; poor soil and unreliable water saw it abandoned within a few years as the colonists moved to the Adelaide Plains.

Farming, fishing and wool built the island slowly. Ligurian bees were brought in during the 1880s and protected by law, Flinders Chase was reserved as a national park in 1919, and after the Second World War soldier settlement schemes cleared much of the interior for farms around Parndana. Tourism grew steadily from the late twentieth century. In the summer of 2019 and 2020 bushfires burned about 52 per cent of the island, including most of Flinders Chase, killing two people and enormous numbers of animals, among them an estimated 80 per cent of the island's 50,000 koalas; rebuilding and regrowth have gone on since.

Kangaroo Island is a farming community with a visitor industry attached, and the two overlap without merging. Residents call themselves islanders, distinguish themselves from mainlanders without much heat, and take a certain pride in self-reliance: a long ferry or a flight from every service, one hospital, a handful of schools, and volunteer fire brigades that everybody supports.

Small producers give the island much of its character. Honey from the protected Ligurian bees, eucalyptus oil distilled from mallee, sheep-milk cheese and yoghurt, marron, olive oil, gin and wine come from operations run by a few people each, many of them open at the gate. Honesty boxes with eggs, fruit or honey and a tin for coins stand at the roadside.

Conservation is close to a civic identity. The island has no foxes or rabbits, quarantine rules are enforced, and residents take part in counting glossy black cockatoos, protecting the endangered Kangaroo Island dunnart and replanting burnt country. The fires of 2019 and 2020 are the reference point for everything recent, and fire talk returns every summer.

Manners are unhurried and practical. Cars are waved at on empty roads, gates are respected, and visitors who drive fast at dusk or feed wildlife are politely corrected. Football and netball clubs, the agricultural show and fishing competitions hold the social year together.

About 5,000 people live on the island, most of them in and around Kingscote, Penneshaw, American River and Parndana, with the rest spread over farms. That population supports one hospital, an area school with smaller campuses, a ferry and an air service, and a single supermarket of any size, so a trip to Adelaide is a normal errand rather than an outing.

Agriculture pays for much of the island. Sheep for wool and meat, grain and canola dominate the cleared interior, and honey, eucalyptus oil, sheep dairying and small vineyards fill in around them. Rock lobster, abalone, King George whiting and oysters come from the sea, and tourism has become one of the largest employers, with an unmistakable summer peak and a very quiet winter.

Everything arrives by ferry, which makes freight the invisible cost behind island prices, and power and water supplies have to cope with isolation. Since the 2019 and 2020 fires, rebuilding has shaped local life, along with shortages of housing and seasonal workers, the cost of insurance, and arguments about how much tourism development the island should take. Fire preparation from December to March is simply part of the calendar.

Honey is the island's signature. Ligurian bees, brought here in the 1880s and now the world's only pure population of the strain, produce honey sold at farm gates and used in ice cream, nougat and mead, and no honey may be brought onto the island in order to keep the bees disease-free. Eucalyptus oil is distilled from local mallee, and sheep-milk yoghurt and cheese come from a dairy in the island's north.

Seafood follows close behind. King George whiting, southern rock lobster, abalone and squid are landed at the island's jetties, oysters are grown in the sheltered water at American River, and marron, a large freshwater crayfish, is farmed inland. Island lamb, free-range eggs, olive oil and honey-fed produce turn up on menus that often name the farm.

Eating out means the pubs, cafés and bakeries of Kingscote and Penneshaw, a lodge dining room or two, and cellar doors and farm kitchens that open to visitors. Small vineyards make cabernet, shiraz and cool-climate whites, and a distillery produces gin with local botanicals. Most visitors self-cater at least part of the time, stocking up in Kingscote before driving west, where shops are few and far apart.