Discover Kangaroo Island

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Craig Tansley travels down red dirt tracks and along the striking coastline on an island where the wildlife is company enough.

Motorists on Kangaroo Island are encouraged to give a wave to fellow drivers as they pass. Now that's not as demanding as it may sound; for starters, you need lift only one finger of the hand with which you're holding the steering wheel; and second, there's hardly anyone on the road and there's a lot of roads to lose them on.

On dirt tracks cut through old-growth bushland, past empty white sandy beaches and freshwater lagoons, past large farms and even through the tiny townships that dot the island you may be grateful for the simplest of human interaction. Or perhaps you won't. After all, on an island where at least one-third of the land mass is a conservation or national park, where more than 50,000 kangaroos and as many as half a million wallabies roam, where thousands of sea-lions, penguins and New Zealand fur seals wait on the beaches and rocks, where heath goannas cross roads at will, echidnas shuffle off to feed and koalas sleep above you in a vast eucalypt canopy, the animals should be more than enough company.

The island is vast, and I'm not sure anything can prepare you for that. You may know it's Australia's third-largest island, but it's not until you're weaving your way down red dirt tracks for hours to get from one coastline to the next that you appreciate the size. There's an almost eerie isolation that channels the feeling you get in the Australian outback, but what Kangaroo Island also offers is a coastline as striking as any in the world. From the squeaky white sands of Vivonne Bay on the south coast, where crayfish boats lie in wait for their next big haul, to the wild surf that hammers Cape Du Couedic and its loyal legion of playful fur seals, to the dolphins you practically have to shoo away to swim at Emu Bay, to the whales that pass the island in the winter months and the thousands of sea-lions that sunbake like backpackers at Seal Bay, there's 541 kilometres of coastline on which to shipwreck yourself. "If you find someone else at a beach then go somewhere else; we don't like crowds on Kangaroo Island," a local tells me.

Because of its isolation, the island hasn't experienced the same problems that came with European settlement in mainland Australia. On more than 2250 square kilometres of old-growth vegetation, there's not one fox or rabbit nibbling at it. Animal and bird populations, many endemic to the island, have prospered. Things could have been a lot different. In 1836 the Government sought to establish the first South Australian colony on the island in Nepean Bay. A lack of good drinking water and building timber meant Nepean Bay wouldn't become the capital of South Australia and by 1840 plans for development were abandoned altogether.

Now there are just 4400 hardy souls living on Kangaroo Island, meaning you will never find a crowd save for wallabies and kangaroos at dawn and dusk and fur seals when the sun's shining. And there is no end of things to do - you could sail to isolated coves, surf the thunderous waves served up from the Southern Ocean, snorkel or dive, take a tour, taste wine, try gourmet foods or sample a beer with a local. Or you could do nothing at all; get lost on a deserted beach or take a drive down a dirt road to nowhere.

In summer the beaches beckon with warm water while the grass turns golden; in autumn the waterways start to flow; winter makes swimming uninviting but the southern right whales seem to enjoy the chill. My preference is spring, when young birds and mammals take their first wobbly steps and the grass turns greener than Ireland's.