Two years later

“I got here (on the Sat­ur­day) straight after the main fire that ran from the north to south of the island,” he said. ​“It was just may­hem, there was wildlife on the road every­where, there were trees down every­where. It was an eerie place to be. The speed and inten­si­ty of the fire was horrendous.”

Mr Williams said the jour­ney from the start of the Flinders Chase Nation­al Park entry to Remark­able Rocks took three hours – well more than the usu­al 25 minute trip on the 20 kilo­me­tre stretch of road wind­ing through the pop­u­lar park.

Before arriv­ing at Remark­able Rocks, Mr Williams had seen that the four Ranger homes, the research cen­tre and the Flinders Chase Vis­i­tor Cen­tre, had all been destroyed. ​“When I first saw the Flinders Chase Vis­i­tor Cen­tre, as a crum­bling mess, it was just gob­s­mack­ing. You could hard­ly recog­nise what it was. There were some stone façade walls there, but the rest was just melt­ed steel and ash. That vision will stay with me for­ev­er,” he said.

Two years lat­er and ground has been pre­pared for a new state-of-the-art vis­i­tor cen­tre to be built in 2022. It is part of the much broad­er plan for the island’s parks, devel­oped with the local community’s guidance.

“Two years on, we are in a great posi­tion to have the parks opened up again for the pub­lic with new facil­i­ties bet­ter than they were pri­or to the fires,” Mr Williams said. ​“I think the com­mu­ni­ty sen­ti­ment is that we are putting good assets back, and we are try­ing to think about how we do fire man­age­ment dif­fer­ent in the future with good com­mu­ni­ty sup­port and input. Out of these unfor­tu­nate events there can be good if there is good­will on behalf of the depart­ment work­ing with the com­mu­ni­ty to make things bet­ter. I think we are demon­strat­ing that with the invest­ments that we are making.”

Many of the island’s icon­ic sites had been impact­ed by the fires includ­ing infra­struc­ture at Remark­able Rocks, the Kan­ga­roo Island Wilder­ness Trail and Kel­ly Hills Caves. A com­mit­ment was made to not only rebuild, but to reimag­ine the vis­i­tor experience.

In fire-affect­ed areas, the focus has been on: 

• Resur­fac­ing the road to the Cape Bor­da Light­sta­tion which over­looks Inves­ti­ga­tor Strait
• Upgrad­ing Cape Du Couedic Road to improve the trip to Remark­able Rocks
• Improved vis­i­tor facil­i­ties, includ­ing toi­lets, a board­walk and signs, to Remark­able Rocks – the most vis­it­ed attrac­tion on the island
• Rebuild­ing two her­itage-list­ed cot­tages, May’s and Postman’s cot­tages, so that they can again be used as tourist accommodation
• Recre­at­ing the Kan­ga­roo Island Wilder­ness Trail
• Rebuild­ing eight camp­grounds through­out the Flinders Chase Nation­al Park
• Recon­struc­tion of Platy­pus Water­holes Loop walk aimed at giv­ing vis­i­tors an increased oppor­tu­ni­ty to see the elu­sive animals
• Cre­ation of a new Flinders Chase Vis­i­tor Centre
• Recre­at­ing day-vis­i­tor facil­i­ties at Kel­ly Hill Caves with the help of an inter­na­tion­al­ly expe­ri­enced cave tour designer.

NPWS Tourism and Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Direc­tor Jo Podoliak said that fol­low­ing the fires her team recog­nised there was an oppor­tu­ni­ty borne from the adver­si­ty of the bush­fires to reimag­ine what the vis­i­tor expe­ri­ence looked like on Kan­ga­roo Island before rebuilding. 

“This was based on the expe­ri­ence of the ACT who ran their own process to ​“build back bet­ter” after the Can­ber­ra bush­fires in 2003,” she said. ​“As a result, the team man­aged an exten­sive com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment process to seek com­mu­ni­ty and stake­hold­er inputs to reimag­ine key loca­tions on the Island. ​“We knew we had a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to think about how we use, man­age and offer expe­ri­ences to vis­i­tors to parks on Kan­ga­roo Island.”

Ms Podoliak said the work with the com­mu­ni­ty was not just about rebuild­ing vis­i­tor facil­i­ties but also cre­at­ing the broad­er vis­i­tor experience.

“But we want­ed to know whether a more com­pelling and unique nature-based tourism expe­ri­ence could be cre­at­ed to build vis­i­tor inter­est and demand,” she said. ​“We knew that Island res­i­dents, tourism oper­a­tors and pre­vi­ous vis­i­tors to the parks all had great ideas on how the parks could be used. Using this feed­back as our anchor, we have devel­oped a Vis­i­tor Expe­ri­ence Strat­e­gy for the Island to inform the design and deliv­ery of excep­tion­al vis­i­tor expe­ri­ences with­in Kan­ga­roo Island parks.”

As part of this broad­er plan to help rebuild the island, major upgrades have been under­way on oth­er parks of the island that were not effect­ed by the fires.

At Antecham­ber Bay, in Lash­mar Con­ser­va­tion Park, two camp­grounds have been upgrad­ed, new acces­si­ble toi­let facil­i­ties have been con­struct­ed, and a new bridge has been built across the Chap­man Riv­er to give vis­i­tors bet­ter access to facil­i­ties on either side.

At Mur­ray Lagoon in Cape Gantheaume Con­ser­va­tion Park and Wilder­ness Pro­tec­tion Area, sev­en large camp sites and new facil­i­ties includ­ing toi­lets, shel­ters and camp­fire pits have been built to accom­mo­date vis­i­tors in tents, camper trail­ers and car­a­vans, as well as a pur­pose-built group camp­ing area being cre­at­ed to ser­vice large school groups.

In the same region six new large camp­sites are avail­able at D’Estrees Bay, includ­ing the new Tea Trees camp­ground which offers a pre­mi­um camp­ing expe­ri­ence with ocean views and mag­nif­i­cent access to the bay. 

At Cape Willough­by, the old­est light­house in South Aus­tralia, is set to become the next upgrad­ed tourism des­ti­na­tion on the island, with work com­menc­ing on the redesign and roll out of a new vis­i­tor precinct. The redesign will include upgrades to her­itage accom­mo­da­tion and day vis­i­tor facil­i­ties, a café and vis­i­tor cen­tre, new walk­ing trails and a spec­tac­u­lar can­tilever view­ing plat­form over­look­ing ​‘Devil’s Kitchen’.

The NPWS has also been lis­ten­ing to the com­mu­ni­ty about how to man­age bush fire risks in the future. A set of park man­age­ment plans have been released that have giv­en res­i­dents of the island anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss what the future looks like.

Mr Williams said the past two years has been dif­fi­cult but the NPWS is com­mit­ted to work­ing with the com­mu­ni­ty to help rebuild the island.

“Many staff had suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant loss and expe­ri­enced extra­or­di­nary trau­ma,” he said. ​“The staff have been tremen­dous, some of the staff at and near Flinders Chase lost hous­es and they were involved in fight­ing the fire. To their cred­it they have been incred­i­ble in how they have pitched in and helped rebuild on the island whilst deal­ing with those cir­cum­stances of per­son­al trau­ma and a sig­nif­i­cant event like that.” 

“There is still a long way to go, and we need to con­tin­ue to sup­port them but they have been fan­tas­tic and you could do noth­ing but com­mend them on their efforts to pitch in and help the place rise from the ashes.”