Category: Animals

The Great Australian Road Trip

July 15, 2014

One day I’m going to drive around Australia. And I don’t just mean here and there, I mean drive all around Australia. As in this:

It’s a trip of almost 20,000 km, or over 200 straight hours of driving at 60 mph. That’s 40 days of driving 5 hours a day, which means this would be lengthy and expensive. But what a trip it would be!

I’d do the reverse route from the map above, starting in Sydney and heading north through Newcastle, Brisbane and all the way up to Cairns. That’s a few days right there, with many stops and things to see on the way. The beaches and coastal roads, especially as you get more and more north, would be beautiful.

And then a several-day trip to Darwin through the outback. Hundreds and hundreds of dry empty miles with not even a radio station on the radio. That would be quite an adventure!

The Darwin to Perth leg may take a week. It’s some of the least inhabited parts of Australia, but there are just enough small towns to make a daily stop possible. Accommodation on this leg may include a tent, or sleeping in the car! I may stay in a comfy hotel in Perth for a day or two to reset 🙂

Half the trip would now be complete and I’d be on the opposite side of the country. But the southern coasts are still to come, and some say these are the most beautiful roads in all of Australia.

It may take a week to get to Adelaide from Perth, stopping everywhere that looks interesting. Between the desert and the southern ocean there would certainly be a lot to see!

And then the windy roads along the Victorian coast would take me to the extreme southeast, at which I’d have to make a decision: Tasmania or no Tasmania? After 5 weeks on the road, who’s to say what I’d decide at that point?

Eventually the landscape would become vaguely familiar, as I drove into NSW and found myself within a few hours of Sydney. Six weeks after starting, I’d reach my destination: exactly where I started.

I’d have seen the entire country, and made enough memories to last me forever.

I’ll do this one day. I have to. Who wants to come with me?

Walkabout

January 8, 2014

Yesterday, with Sue (it was her birthday!) and her kids, I visited an animal sanctuary called Australian Walkabout Wildlife Park.

It was a strange sort of animal park. It’s mostly open (and mostly uncultured bushland) with scattered enclosures. Many roos and wallabies and emus walk freely throughout the park and (the large ones at least) are surprisingly unafraid.

We could pat (but not feed) them. Their fur is surprisingly soft, almost in some cases like velvet!

The emus on the other hand are terrifying, especially to the kids who were smaller than the birds!

We noticed a small wallaby (or perhaps pademelon) sitting in the shade who didn’t hop away like her ilk. We quietly approached and were amazed to see a little head peep out from her pouch:

There was also one kangaroo that was particularly friendly. I think he thought he was someone’s pet:

Amongst the other animals on display were quolls…

And Tasmanian devils:

Both were being fed kangaroo parts, which was a bit ironic and grisly. The circle of life, I suppose!

I’m a big fan of kangaroos and enjoyed the park quite a bit. While it was smaller and less flashy than a place like Featherdale, I think it’s a better (and less busy) place to see the animals in a more natural environment.

That’s dad with a dog, which was taken later in the day. The dog belongs to an old family friend who was in the nunnery with mum.

In the afternoon, I became a photographers assistant while my brother took some long-exposure neutral density beach photography. Expect results on his blog…

Here’s dinner; a burger with beetroot and carrot on it:

Delicious!

It Felt Like A Sheep

December 31, 2013

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!

Robot Claw