Both our hotels had fantastic breakfast buffets the likes of which I hadn’t seen since Hawaii. Apparently that’s a thing here. I should stay in more Australian hotels!
On the way back from the Blue Mountains we stopped at this place:
A ‘wildlife park’ is a small zoo, and in Australia they frequently prioritize Australian animals including birds. We were surprised to find Featherdale right in the middle of suburbia, but this didn’t affect the quality of this 40-year old park.
They’ve got about a billion birds, half a billion koalas and a wide selection of other Australian fauna including kangaroos, echidna, various reptiles, bats, wombats (active ones even!) and quokkas, like the baby shown above.
The animals are displayed nicely in large and well landscaped enclosures. The big draw of the park though is how close you can get to certain favorites:
In order, those are a wallaby, a bear, and a kangaroo. The bear was dense and immovable, and his fur felt almost exactly like a sheep. He’s also extremely old for his race, being almost 15.
Bernard was in bird-photo-heaven at the park, taking many snaps of everything with feathers. If he doesn’t do a blog soon showcasing some of the great photos he has taken, I’m going to destroy his birthday gifts 🙂
As I mentioned above, Featherdale has an enormous Koala population. I suspect one reason is they accept orphaned Australian animals and have a constant influx of Koalas. As a result you can pat one any time the park is open, which is very popular with the foreign tourists!
Here’s another shot of an Australian animal eating at the park:
And an interesting example of the difference in appearance between two animals of the same species:
After Featherdale we continued back to Randwick, and a lazy evening of eating, movie-watching (Pacific Rim and Kick-Ass 2) and falling asleep before the New Year’s Eve fireworks!