Humans of Kangaroo Island: People make a place

By Sabrina Davis

Kangaroo Island is a tight-knit community of self-reliant people passionate about farming, food, art, animals, nature, and sport. But even the tough become daunted. Lurching from one tragedy to the next, the worldwide pandemic overwhelmed the recovery of an island that had already lost it all during the d

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stories for Impact
• Release date: Nov 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781925856507

Sabrina Davis

Sabrina Davis is an award-winning professional writer and proofreader who grew up in Eastern Germany. She has a passion for storytelling and the beautiful tangle of relationships between people. As a young girl, when she didn't have her head inside books, Sabrina was a writer of her own imaginary stories. Her dreams were to follow in her grandfather's footsteps one day, a part-time sports journalist whom she adored and followed around every weekend reporting about community soccer games and developing her typewriting skills. Finding her adult feet in Public Relations and Marketing, she honed her writing craft in copywriting and selling brands for years until the travel bug hit her. Whilst exploring the world and eventually finding love in Australia, the now 38-year-old kept writing travel blogs to share her adventures with a growing community of readers. When Sabrina made South Australia's gem Kangaroo Island her home, she realised she had found something very special and unique-a place and community you'll never forget. After experiencing devastation herself during the Black Summer fires in 2019/20, followed by the isolation of Covid-19, the mother-of-two returned to her writing roots, with the powerful urge to communicate with and for her island community. Initially wanting to connect, uplift and inspire the people around her, Sabrina sensitively collected and published people's stories online. Sharing the islander's highs and lows have become not only her passion but also enabled her to give back to her community, encouraging, motivating and supporting them with her fundraising efforts. These powerful stories soon found book form, extending the inspiration to others around the world.

Book preview

FIND OUT MORE:

www.humansofkangarooisland.com

/humansofki

/humansofkangarooisland

@ Copyright, Sabrina Davis, 2021

Apart from any use permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced by any means, without the prior written permission of Stories for Impact, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover and Typeset- Sarah Strong-Law with fonts Book Antiqua, Stylish and Segoe Script

National Library of Australia and State Library of South Australia Legal Deposit

Davis, Sabrina (1982) — Author

Humans of Kangaroo Island

ISBN: 978-1-925856-49-1

ebook ISBN: 978-1-925856-50-7

DEDICATION:

To the Kangaroo Island community

Onwards and Upwards

The production of this book was generously supported by the Community Enterprise Foundation Bendigo and Adelaide Bank. This book was one of many projects with focus on the short-term recovery, to support resilience, rebuilding and strengthening communities.

More than $400,000 had been raised to make a difference to bushfire affected communities like Kangaroo Island, thanks to people supporting the Bendigo Bank’s South Australian Bushfire Appeal.

PEOPLE & PAGES

Kylie

Joy

Piper

Dick

Sandy

Boone

Josh

Catherine

Madelyn

Sam

Alice

Steven

Barb

Chelsea

Peter

Darry

Tom

Amanda

Fred

Jack

Jayne

Pete

Brooke

Maggie

Evie

Doug

Brad

Bea

Carlos

Louis

Vicki

Ayisha

Craig

Kangaroo Island is a tight-knit community of hardworking, positive and self-motivated individuals from all parts of the world that keep inspiring each other every day in every way. Here you find people passionate about farming, food, art, animals, nature and sport. The project Humans of Kangaroo Island was created to showcase this warm and welcoming place through its wonderful humans to residents and visitors alike.

Humans of Kangaroo Island has since told many islander stories and created a positive impact, with fundraisers flowing more than $60,000 into the community. Sales of this story collection will continue to support yet another community fundraiser and go directly to the island people.

FIND OUT MORE:

www.humansofkangarooisland.com

/humansofki

/humansofkangarooisland

Kangaroo Island was fire-ravaged during the Black Summer fires in December 2019 and January 2020, shortly followed by the worldwide pandemic affecting island businesses and slowing down the recovery process of those islanders who had lost it all. Local resident Sabrina Davis started the project Humans of Kangaroo Island to close the gap Covid-19 had created in the community, hoping that the stories will inspire, uplift and re-connect islanders whilst living in isolation bubbles. The local humans have since shared stories from their childhood and upbringing, talk about their home countries and different cultures, and reminisce in what makes the island so special for them.

Thank you for supporting the Humans of Kangaroo Island project.

The majority of the book proceeds will be donated towards the rebuild of play equipment at the fire-affected Western Districts Community and Memorial Sports Centre for all island children to enjoy.

I came over for a holiday, fell in love and decided to move here. I love small places, small towns and the fact you can connect well with people close to you. It’s just a beautiful place; the nature, going out hiking and it’s so easy to go up to the mainland for a weekend to see the city. Compared to where I am from, here you can just hop on a plane and fly overseas in just twenty minutes. Living remote in the middle of nowhere in the Northern Territory was hard. The closest airport was a 500-kilometre drive away so this place is a walk in the park. Everyone says KI is remote, but I always say ‘are you kidding me, shut up, it really is not.’ 2020 was challenging. First everything with the fires, seeing everyone’s pain, and then to top it off Coronavirus came along. It was all so sad and really shitty and it made me realise what is important to me and what I want to do. It makes you think, we only have now, we got to enjoy where we are and every moment of it.

On one of my travel trips, I decided to go hiking Tongariro in New Zealand and it was the first time I travelled solo. It was like a whole mountain already just getting to New Zealand on my own. I wasn’t really prepared to go and do a 24-kilometre hike and I honestly didn’t think I could do it. It was a hike over two mountains—one of them called the Devil’s staircase. I remember saying at the start ‘Shit, what am I doing here?’