Kangaroos and Koalas, Oh My!

Today we slept a bit late, showered, and went off to find breakfast. Unfortunately...everything was basically closed lol. Womp womp. We went back to our AirBnb to figure out our next move and luckily Damien was there to point us in the right direction - to the Bike Shop! Whichhhhh is a bike shop in the back and a breakfast bar in the front...and they make the most delicious egg sandwiches! Score! From there we caught the metro toooooooo ANIMALES!!

One of the things I'd been most excited to do in Australia was to hang out with some Kangaroos and Koalas. While we'd been fortunate enough to see wild Koalas in Melbourne, we had yet to see Kangaroos...and it was about time!

After taking the metro and the bus for...quite a while... we ended up at Featherdale Animal Sanctuary, a well known place about an hour West of Sydney CBD with TONS of animals includinggggg KANGAROOS AND KOALASSSSSSSS :).

Some fun facts about Koalassssssss:

- There are over 700 species of Eucalyptus but koalas only eat 20 of these species. Eucalyptus leaves are filled with cyanide (ruh roh!) and Koalas can only digest these specific 20 species which have lesser amounts of the poison than the others. Also, these leaves are 60% water which is where Koalas get most of their water.
- Koalas have over 2 meters of intestines - one of the longest of any land animal.
- Koala's fur is so thick that ticks and most other insects can't get to their skin.
- Koalas have grey and black hair on their backs and white hair underneath their bellies. When they are cold they ball up to expose their black backs and when they are hot they spread out on their backs to expose their bellies to cool down!
- Their gestational period is only 34 days, after which the baby Koala, the size of a bean, is born. It then climbs into its mother's pouch and stays there for 6 months before it's ready to come out and begin living on its own. Between 6-12 months the koala continues its life in and out of its mother's pouch before being totally kicked out at between 10-12 months old.
- In order for baby Koalas to get used to the cyanide in Eucalyptus leaves, the mothers will eat additional eucalyptus leaves which they will then poop out in a mixture called "pap". The babies then eat the pap which coats their stomachs and helps to increase their immunity to the cyanide in Eucalpytus. Yum!

After learning about these adorable critters while waiting on line it was finally our turn to have fun with them! MAN were they cute!!

While it's illegal to hold koalas in Australia, we were able to hang out with them and pet them (they felt kind of like a plush rug, a little stiff but fairly soft).

After hanging out with lots of Koalas for a while, we continued to explore the sanctuary finding... a GIANT CROCODILE (about 20 feet long - sorry no picture!) AND we finally found cassowaries!:

They are actually kinda scary looking - glad we didn't encounter any in the wild!!!!!

PENGUINS!:

Penguins are endemic to the south of Australia! Who woulda thought!

ANDDDDD the deadliest snake in the world...the Inland Taipan!

In addition, we saw TONS of birds, dingos, wallabies, echidnas, anddddd KANGAROOS!!

There was a whole area with open kangaroos grazing and you could hang out with them, feed them (even though none of them wanted the food I offered them. Womp.), and pet them!

They were so adorable and so much fun to hang out with! I spent a LOT of time with the roos :-p.

They were super well behaved and seemed to enjoy being pet. It kinda seemed like they were a fan of the attention :).

Overall Featherdale was a great place and we had a wonderful time connecting with the animals and learning about them. After checking out the kangaroos we decided to forgo the bus and walk back to the metro. A long but worthwhile walk which helped us catch the train just in time! We arrived at the RedFern stop (after both falling asleep on our hour long trip) anddd then realizing we actually wanted to head into town to check out Darling Harbor. So we left the train station and had to go back in to the station......... anddddddd we had to pay double! It sucked! So instead of realizing ahead of time that we wanted to go an additional 3 stops (which would have cost us an extra 40 cents total), we needed to pay $16 extra to get into the city. BOOOOOOO.

When we arrived in Darling Harbor we wandered into the annual Greek Festival! As mentioned in a previous post, Australia has the highest Greek population outside of Greece. We got gyros for dinner (which redeemed Australia for the awful Greek food we'd eaten in Melbourne) and enjoyed the sunset over the harbor.

before heading back to the apartment. Looking forward to our adventures tomorrow!

Jess' highlight of the day: KOALAS AND KANGAROOS!
Jon's highlight of the day: Featherdale