Featherdale Wildlife Park (Feb 17)

*Featherdale Wildlife Park is fantastic! Though this Australia so you can probably expect all of our posts to begin with  ....is fantastic! Placed conveniently close to the house of relatives, it is a sanctuary of a myriad of Australian animals, both iconic and otherwise.

~ Agreed. After our first Australian Early Morning Run, and a delicious breakfast of jamon serrano and tomato on toast, we went with our cousins to the park. Upon entering, you are issued a Passport of Animals which dually serves as a park map. The entry way exhibit is already very cool. There are large aviary enclosures housing a colorful assortment of Australian birds enticing your eye to follow their aerial antics and loud calls, so it is that you manage to walk across a teeny bridge and through a gate into the park without really looking where you are going. Which lasts promptly until you are confronted by a wallaby.
Much of the park's enclosures are completely free ranging, with fencing for the exhibits that loosely indicates to the more domesticated of the avian inhabitants where they ought to come back for dinner each night, and open roaming areas for groups of the wallabys, kangaroos, and a few very insistent emus, one of whom nearly took Ben's hand off.

* Ok, so here how the story goes. When you get to the Kangaroo enclosure you enter a largeish plot of land through a gate which closes behind you and immediately confronted with a dozen kangaroos that hopping or lounging about. As a guy coming from Maryland, it is an exceptionally cool experience to able walk up to a free ranging Kangaroo. After admiring them for a while Manuel got us each a ice cream cone full of some kind of dry grass feed and invited us to feed the roos. Those guys are so cute. When I knelt down and held out the cone in front of one he took a couple of inquisitive whiffs then stuck his face in and started munching happily away. However, the sudden appearance of snack caught the attention of one of the emus which also shared the enclosure and it started to walk my way. That's when the trouble started. When VERY large bird was standing next to me I thought "Hey, now worries. He's just curious, like a big pigeon." Nope. SHOOOMMWHACK His beak (roughly the size of my hand) shot in and out of the cone I was holding with a speed I usually associate with striking snakes. "Well, that was unsettling." SHOOOMMWHACK  "OK, backing up. Nice birdy." By this point I was entertained but had stood up and resolved to give the cone to the nearest Kangaroo I saw. Seeing a freindly and hopeful looking fellow, I knelt and handed him the cone. Once again, they are so cute. He took the cone in his two little hands and started contentedly on the cone. One last time, SHOOOMWHACK and GULP. The emu had come up alongside the roo, snatched the cone from his hands and eaten the cone in one giant swallow. So, in summary, Kangaroos=cute, emus= decisive.

~ It looked like this:

~ From my perspective, very funny. We also saw...

Wallabies, sittin' on a log. There was a little refuge area they could duck under a single  pole to access in case any tourists were being too annoying. These guys seemed pretty chilled out on their perch.  

Tawny Frogmouths! I'd only ever seen one before,  in captivity and half a world away. Here was one sitting out in the open, inches away from the footpath. Then I looked up and saw about six of them just behind this guy.

Red kangaroos and Grey kangaroos. Go on, guess which is which. I'll bet you're right!

Fairy Penguins! Surprisingly small and blue, native inhabitants of the Great Australian Bight, and totally adorably named.
*Australia has penguins!? New plan, assume Australia has everything.

Also, echindas (adorable), wombats (absurd), rock tailed wallabies (VERY speedy!), a chicken-like bird with a totally ridiculous hair-do, and a crocodile and a taipan. This now concludes our entire Australian, or indeed worldwide, viewing quotas for taipan, the most dangerous snake in the world. It was asleep, behind glass, and safely out of reach. May it and it's kin stay that way.


~ And so, after a totally mesmerizing and wonderful day at the Featherdale Wildlife Park, our cousins took us on to the Panther's Club for lunch. Battered fried barramundi fish and chips with Queensland's own XXXX beer. Could any afternoon be better?

~ From Featherdale, we went to check out the Australian Whitewater Kayaking Course, just because it seemed like a cool thing to see. We all parked, and Ben and I went exploring. As we walked around, we kept thinking, "WHOA everyone here is in REALLY amazing shape! Clearly, we have found the seriously fit section of Australia." And then we saw the sign on the board that said it was the Australian Whitewater Kayaking Open that day. So we sat for a while and watched the runs. Those guys made it look easy; a great show.  We watched until just watching made us hungry, and reunited with our cousins to go to their daughter and son-in-laws place to return the borrowed grandchild and have pizza.

~ I have this to say: Dominoes in Australia is different, and awesome. For starters, the meat selection choices are way more exciting than at home. Secondly, the crusts are thinner, less doughy, more crusty. Excellent. And best of all, one of the pizzas has BBQ sauce as a base, in place of marinara. Just genius. And in such fashion, we passed another completely lovely evening with a wing of our Australian family.