Giant Worms Found on King Island, Bass Strait, Australia

I thought I'd found giant worms on King Island, Bass Strait, Australia.

A couple of years ago I visited King Island, located between northwest Tasmania, to the south, and the Victorian coast on mainland Australia, to the north. Although there are some spectacular spots around King Island, the island doesn't feature any high mountains. It's mostly beef and dairy cattle (grazing on gently rolling hills), kelp and fishing.

Three days were spent on the island, with a flight around the coast and the rest of the time touring by car. On one of the days, I headed towards the southern end of the island, and saw these long green things in the distance.



With my weird sense of humour, I immediately thought of the Giant Worm Museum at Bass in Victoria. It's a structure which depicts a giant earth worm. Gippsland is apparently the only place in the world where these creatures can grow to about 3 metres in length (good food for nightmares I think).

Or, they could be giant wichetty grubs. In reality, they are only big round bales of hay covered in plastic (silage or haylage bales which begin to ferment with the moisture). Still, it makes for an interesting picture and a very tall tale.

The track that I was driving on was very windy and narrow and fortunately I didn't encounter a kelp truck which would have been around earlier in the day. I'll post about the kelp later on.

Check out the penguins on King Island too.


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Penguins' Poor Navigation Skills

In Australia, there are two main islands off the southern coast commonly referred to as KI - King Island and Kangaroo Island.

King Island, in Bass Strait, off the northwest coast of Tasmania, lies in the Roaring Forties and can be fairly windy at times. Many sailing ships and lives have been lost around the rocky coast due to the winds and inclement weather. However, the island still provides a welcome haven for a colony of Little Penguins near the small settlement of Grassy.

The other KI is Kangaroo Island, a bigger and more hilly island, off the southeast coast of South Australia, not that far from Adelaide, the capital. The main town on Kangaroo Island is Kingscote and Little Penguins also have a colony near there too.

Now, while I was on King Island, Angela, from the local fish & chip shop, took me to see the penguin rookery after dark. Penguins were everywhere and they didn't seem to have any fear of two mere humans, so we were able to sticky beak into their lives.

It was a great photo opportunity (being careful not to upset the little birds) and I'm positive that these two Little Penguins didn't quite know what was going on and seemed to be saying...