Animals of Australia

No visit to Australia is complete without a visit to a wildlife park. We visited Waratah Park, located in the northern suburbs of Sydney, where we viewed Australian animals up close, and fed kangaroos (who were already so well fed they weren't interested in our food).

Bill and Ian White feed a kangaroo. This kangaroo eagerly ate the food, but several turned their heads away because they already had enough to eat.

Bill and I both enjoyed getting up close to the kangaroos. These kangaroos were obviously used to people because they would eat out of your hand. Kangaroos hop because their back legs don't move independently of each other and they use their tails for balance.

If you look carefully, you can see a mother kangaroo with a joey's head sticking out of her pouch. The joey was quite large and also had a leg sticking out as well. I don't see how mother kangaroos carry their joeys when they get as big as this one.

Although we were told that it was safe to feed the emus, we decided against it because they really looked mean and we wanted to take our hands with us back to the United States.

We were a little too early for the koala petting, but since they have such sharp claws, I wasn't too disappointed. Koalas seem to sleep most of the time although there was one at the Taranga Zoo on our first trip that had his mind set on getting out of his cage.

The wombat is a very interesting Australian animal about the size of a pig. He moves very slowly and keeps to himself most of the time.

We also saw a dingo, who had to work very hard to find the food placed on a platform in his cage, a crocodile submerged under the water, the Tasmanian Devil, who looks nothing like his Warner Brothers counterpart, and many beautiful birds. I don't think Steve Irwin has any worries about our taking over his wildlife explorations as I was glad that many of the animals were on the opposite side of the fence from us.

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