Kangaroo Island and South Australia Travel Guide

Kangaroo Island is the reason to come to South Australia, and this guide says so plainly rather than pretending to cover a whole state. It sits about 70 miles southwest of Adelaide, reached by a forty five minute ferry from Cape Jervis or a short flight, and it does something that has become rare in Australia, which is put you close to wild animals in the places they actually live rather than in enclosures built for visitors.

The island is considerably bigger than almost everyone expects, roughly 90 miles long, and that gap between expectation and reality causes the most common planning mistake here. Penneshaw is the ferry port at the eastern end, and Flinders Chase National Park, with Remarkable Rocks and Admirals Arch, sits a two hour drive away at the western end. Seal Bay is in the middle, where you walk down onto the beach among Australian sea lions. Three full days is the right amount of time, and the day trip from Adelaide is the version to avoid.

One thing to know before you arrive is that roughly half the island burned in the fires of late 2019 and early 2020, including most of Flinders Chase. The western end still shows it, and the recovery has been steady rather than complete. It is much better known in advance than discovered on the day. Below are the guides for getting there, where to stay, and how to spend the days.