The Wild Side of Australia

Good news! We got the apartment in Coogee! We are still unsure as of today whether we will be in by the 4th when we have to be out of the hotel suite, but the latest we will be moving in is the 10th. We will have to find a place to stay in the meantime, but we'll figure it out! Now we are starting our online hunting for furniture! Luckily there are many people looking to get rid of stuff right in the area we are moving into!

Australia Day here was fun. We headed to Bondi Beach and had the official tour. We saw the "famous" Bondi rescue lifeguards, but did not see any rescues for ourselves. On average, they rescue 100 people a day! Most are not in imminent danger, but have got caught in a rip tide sweeping them out to sea that they can't swim against. Others get stung by the Bluebottle Jellyfish, which gives a nasty sting to anyone that accidently swims into it. The best thing for a sting is a special soothing spray and an icepack, not urine as is the common misconception.

Many people were decked out in their Australian flag gear everywhere we went. Later in the evening, despite some rain, the evening show in the harbour was great. There were Aboriginal performers, a boat parade, great music, and best of all, fireworks!

Yesterday, Friday the 30th, we got up with the sun and went down to Darling Harbour to have breakfast with koalas! With 7 other people we sat and ate breakfast surrounded by koalas - 7 koalas to be exact. We were able to stand in the closure for about 30 minutes right beside the koalas. It was the perfect time to try out our new SLR camera. Petting the koala was interesting as it's fur was a lot rougher than I thought it would be. In the state of New South Wales it is illegal to hold a koala bear (which is not a bear at all, but a marsupial!). The keeper told us this is for two important reasons. One is that the koala bear has very sharp claws and if startled or tickled (yes, koalas are apparently ticklish!), they bat away whatever it is bothering them with their hands, incidentally clawing and scratching. Also, koala bears have extremely fragile bones and lifting them from under the arms or around the rib cage could potentially crack their ribs, which would be terrible for the koala. There are still states in Australia that allow koalas to be held, but the keeper said that it will soon be illegal everywhere to hold koalas.

Here are some other cool facts we learned: Koalas only eat eucalyptus leaves, but not just any type of eucalyptus leaf! Out of the 900 varieties of eucalyptus leaf found in Australia, koalas eat only 80 varieties. Eucalyptus leaves are actually toxic for koalas, just as they would be for humans. Because of this, koalas wake up in the morning, eat their fill of leaves and then spend 16-20 hours a day sleeping to digest the poisonous leaves! Why in the world would they choose these toxic leaves as their only source of food?! Well, because no other animal eats the leaves, and thus there is no competition for food. Pretty smart. Koalas life for 7-10 years. Most of the koalas we saw were 3 years old, which is a teenager in koala years. The "grandpas" were 7 years old.

Just like a kangaroo, baby koalas are born in their mother's pouch and spend some time there until they are able to climb on their own, and no longer need their mother's milk. The pouch on a koala is different than a kangaroo: the pouch is upside down! It has a tight muscle that acts like an elastic bottom to keep the baby in. We were so lucky to see a baby koala with a keeper and then later sleeping in it's mother's pouch very comfortably upside down! We also learned that before the baby koala stops drinking milk it needs to start getting used to solid foods. It can't eat the eucalyptus leaves right away, so in between milk and leaves it eats it's mother's droppings... yes, poop. Mushy baby food isn't looking so bad now, is it?

For the remainder of the morning we explored Sydney's Wildlife World with the 7 other people for about 40 minutes before the front gates even opened. Having the whole place to ourselves was pretty cool. We saw many animals, birds, reptiles and insects native to Australia including kangaroos, wombats, bilbies, skinks, wallabies, pythons, the red-backed spider, funnel spider (most poisonous spider in the world), Inland Taipan snake (most venomous snake in the world), and many more! The neatest animal to us was the Hairy-Nose Wombat. It is the funniest looking little animal I think I have ever seen! We had a close encounter in the butterfly walk-thru: one very large butterfly really loved my orange shirt and just would not leave me alone! In the bird walk-thru I was taking a photo of a colourful bird when splat! a glob landed on my toe and sure enough, I had been pooped on! I like getting close to animals, but not that close.

After our wildlife experience we headed to the aquarium to check out the fish! Here we saw many species of coral, fish, eels, sharks, stingray, seahorses, sea stars, sea turtles, crocodiles and octopus. One octopus was very tiny and cute, but very venomous! It is called the Bluering Octopus and it hides in the rocks along the ocean. We have been warned never to stick our fingers into any rocky tidal pools! One sting from this little fella can paralyze and even kill someone! The coolest stingray was about the size of a large 2-person bed! We got to walk through tunnels underneath the water to get an up-close and personal look at these amazing creatures! One sea creature that I had never heard of is a dugong. It is an endangered mammal and reminded me of a beluga whale.

What a great introduction to Australia's diverse environment! We can't wait to get out and actually see all of these beautiful creatures in the rainforest, the desert, the forests and the ocean!