KANGAROO ISLAND TRAIL

Karta Pintingga (Kangaroo Island), nestled off the coast of South Australia, is home to the kind of biodiversity that draws me like a moth to a flame. A place where rugged cliffs dissolve into turquoise bays it carries a quiet gravity that pulls you in….

But this island has also become a living archive of environmental change. The catastrophic bushfires of 2020 tore through vast swathes of habitat, reshaping landscapes overnight and leaving scars still visible today. More recently, toxic algal blooms — another sobering consequence of a warming climate — have swept along its shores, devastating marine life and unsettling already fragile ecosystems. Karta Pintingga has borne witness to our changing world, absorbing its impacts with a resilience that feels both humbling and heartbreaking.

And yet, five years on, what struck me most was not the loss, but the recovery. Banksia and sheoak are pushing through blackened soils, green tendrils reclaiming ground once reduced to ash. Along the coast, seabirds return to familiar ledges, and new growth softens the memory of fire. Walking these shorelines felt like moving through a living lesson in ecological persistence, every sprouting plant and rebuilding habitat a quiet act of defiance. Nature, given even the smallest opportunity, reaches instinctively for renewal.

The trail carried me past the Remarkable Rocks into a world shaped by wind and sea. Lizards scattered across sun-warmed stone, tadpoles flickered through quiet pools, wallabies slipped between the scrub, and koalas dozed high in eucalyptus branches. And even better, I had the entire coastline to myself. The kind of solitude that makes every encounter feel sharper and more intimate.