Featherdale Wildlife Park

Get ready guys -- today was the day I got my photo taken with a koala AND fed a kangaroo!! I know it's really too awesome to even comprehend, but try. This was done at a zoo I liked better than Taronga, probably because it had the animals I wanted to see and it was less expensive (its name is Featherdale Wildlife Park). Plus I had the aforementioned pictures taken for free and didn't have to pay $20 for the koala like at Taronga. As I've mentioned before, it's illegal to hold a koala in NSW but you can do it in other parts of Oz as long as they are in a zoo.

As a funny side note, I was telling some Aussies about how I wanted to go to Featherdale. One of them asked why, and the other responded, "Because you can get your picture with a koala. Americans love that crap." What a beauty!

At any rate, here's the picture of me with a koala who wouldn't cooperate. I got to touch him and he felt soft (as you would expect). Objective #1 achieved... I can now leave Australia feeling completed. I'm not sure why the color came out the way it did though.

For $1 AUD you can buy an ice cream cone full of kangaroo food... obviously I did just that. At one point there were like three trying to get at it! The other park patrons were really nice and offered to take a photo of me so I have like four photos of myself feeding kangaroos if any of you want to buy copies or something.

After that, I saw a wombat. I took a picture of it because you can see its insanity... it just kept walking back and forth over that bit of ground cleared out. I always see zoo animals doing that and I think they just must be on the slow road to Crazy Town.

There was another tassie devil (tasmanian devil) that was also going insane. It just kept running in a circle around its pile of rocks. I took a video of it because it was kind of hilarious. And by kind of, I mean it was. In a sad sort of way... but honestly its little enclosure was bigger than the one in Taronga. Watch the video here.

Then I saw a crocodile getting fed! Apparently this one was captured by a little crocodile farm to breed babies (he had originally been eating dogs at a local Abo community) but he killed and ate his female partners. The park then took him. You can watch the video here

Of course there's always the dingo -- looks like a dog but can't bark.

I also got my photo taken with a bilby, which is going extinct in Australia. I bought a little bilby pin for $2AUD to support their conservation efforts. Also bought a boomerang!

There was also bird called a Tawny Frogmouth... I liked how weird it looked so I took a picture of it.

And lastly, here is a koala trying to antagonize another one... poor bastard. Watch it here.