Islands In The Sea: Granite, Wright, Pullen and West Islands

Even though down here in Australia we live on a big island, sea kayakers are still ineluctably drawn to off-shore islands. Close in shore, far from the mainland, rocky, sandy, precipitous we just love paddling out to and around islands. Being able to land is a bonus, but far from a necessity.

In Encounter Bay, by the town of Victor Harbour, there is a scattering of granite islands, mostly low lying, they are all close in to shore and can be paddled in a single day trip. We launched from tiny Horseshoe Bay which is semi-sheltered by Pullen Island, around 9 am one Sunday morning. The beach was quiet and we easily walked our boats down the surf club ramp to the beach, paddled out through a small break and past Freeman Nob into the rolling swells of the Southern Ocean.

Down here in the Southern Ocean, the wave period is long, I think on this day it was nearly 15 seconds so we kept a close eye out for breaking reefs and bommies. Heading southwest, we quickly came to Granite Island. This is a major tourist attraction in the area, connected to the mainland by a 250 metre long causeway along which a long suffering horse is forced to pull a large carriage over-burdened with tourists who need exercise way more than the horse does. We avoided this nonsense by paddling around the south side of Granite Island.

Continuing southwest to Wright Island we were paddling outside a line of breaking reefs and passed Wright Island to the south as well. Wright Island is a smaller version of Granite Island, without the horse.  Next comes Rosetta Head, a large granite dome that rises to 100 metres and is well worth the walk up for the view. There is a really nice trail that leads from town all along the coast to join the Heysen Trail at King Beach and goes over the top of Rosetta Head.

Further southwest, our last island for today, West Island, formerly a granite quarry, now a Conservation Park. We looped around West Island, paddling by sea lions on the rocks and many sea birds. Landing at King Beach, the last sheltered landing on the Fleurieu Peninsula for the next forty kilometres, required wrapping around a breaking reef to the east and then paddling back west to surf into the beach. Granite rocks stud the small sand beach so a careful landing is necessary.

On our way back to Horseshoe Bay, we paddled into Rosetta Harbour and passed along the northern sides of Wright and Granite Island although this required dodging a lot of breaking reefs. Finally, we wrapped around the eastern side of Pullen Island at Horseshoe Bay and confronted a beach packed with swimmers along the full length. As a good southerly wind had now whipped the seas up, the landing required a bit more attention, especially as taking out a swimmer was now a real possibility. Twice we lined up a clear space to land and then had a tourist wander in to the water directly in front of our kayaks, much like the proverbial deer in the headlights.

Eventually, we managed to dash into shore and then had to man handle our kayaks - almost six metres long - through the throngs on the beach, a more difficult feat than any of the paddling we had done.