A strange silhouette emerges ahead of our 4x4, rhythmically bouncing just like in a cartoon. It’s a shape somehow removed from reality, confounding perceived laws of balance — how do they stay upright?! — but instantly recognisable from countless company logos and a character in Winnie-the-Pooh. Kangaroos are an everyday sight for most Australians, but for the rest of us, they’re fantastical creatures, and the most beloved marsupial of all.
My tour guide from Exceptional Kangaroo Island is living up to his company’s adjective. With his wits very much about him, he expertly swerves out of the animal’s path, no sweat. With some 65,000 kangaroos calling Australia’s third largest island home, such traffic is common. (Although, with a permanent human population of just 4,417, mostly concentrated in the teeny town of Kingscote, actual cars aren’t so frequent.) Nevertheless, the thrilling unpredictability of nature makes my heart skip a beat, intensifying the rugged unruliness of Kangaroo Island, or ‘KI’,
