Day 77-78: Kanga & Roo
One of the main attractions of Australia is its wildlife,
its beautifully unique collection of marsupials that crawl, run, swim and hop
across that vast open land. Sadly, most of these animals don’t crawl, run, swim
and hop across Victoria. These more urban areas that are devoid of kangaroos
still have ‘Kangaroo Crossing’ and ‘Koala Crossing’ signs to give us poor
travelers hope that, much like the deer that infest New Jersey, we might come
across a Kangaroo hopping across the road. Thankfully, deep inside Phillip
Island, there exists an Australian Wildlife farm, that isn’t as limiting as
zoos while still not being like safaris or game parks, where enjoyment is tied
up in the percentages of actually coming across those animals. No, this
wildlife park is small and intimate enough to not get tiring or disappointing.
You will come across animals, a lot of them. My sister went to this same park
when she came to Australia, and out of all of the pictures of her trip I’ve
seen, the ones that stick in my mind are the ones of her feeding and
interacting with those kangaroos. I looked forward to a lot of things in my
Australian trip, but most of the sites and city experiences are familiar to
people who live in first world countries that speak English. Outside of meeting
my family again, this is the thing I was looking forward to most about coming
to Australia, and it was a great way to end my time there.
We left for Phillip Island on Saturday morning, getting to
Phillip Island in decent time as we drove through open freeways for most of the
ride. When we entered Phillip Island about an hour and fifteen minutes after we
left Melbourne, the freeways ended and smaller roads winding through open
fields inside a thin island with the water surrounded us on one side. We first
drove to the tip of the island to the Hobbies; boardwalks winding up and down
through the rocky tip of the island. In this area were naturally made and
man-made penguin nesting holes. These penguins weren’t as cute and plentiful as
those in South Africa, but the cute little birds were cozily nuzzled inside
their little holes, escaping the abnormally hot late fall weather. After a nice
little walk around the island tip and some nice pictures against a gorgeous
backdrop we drove back to Cowes, the main city on Phillip Island.
Cowes is the main city in Phillip Island, but it is more
accurately a town, and a small one at that. Our guesthouse was at one end of
Cowes, and the small size of the town gave us a great opportunity to walk the distance
of the town on the waterfront and back and not get close to being tired. We
first went for a late lunch at ‘The Hotel’ a restaurant on the waterfront that
they go to every time they go to Phillip Island. I had salt and pepper squid,
which was really good. Oddly, they chose only that weird textured portion of
the squid instead of the rings or the legs. From there we went back to the
guesthouse and dropped Gavan back who had to finish an assignment, and left for
the Wildlife Park.
The only problem with our plan is that no one could fully
remember just where the park was, but we found it soon enough. The entrance is
quite plain and simple, with a gravel parking lot and small wood cabin that
serves as the entrance to the park. Behind lay amazing mysterious animals, and
I didn’t know how great the experience would be.
The first part are a few cages housing the dingos, which to
me were basically golden colored wolves, and the Tasmanian Devils, the little
dog-like creatures that are far deadlier than they are cuddly. Next came the
first free-range areas, with red kangaroos and emus. There weren’t many
kangaroos in this area, probably because I’m not sure if they and emus are
really friendly towards each other. The presence of the kangaroos was lessened
with the presence of the emus. While Emus are also unique to Australia, they
are quite scary, especially since they are more than ready to run over to
anyone with kangaroo feed. Since I quickly decided that having them peck the
little pellets of feed from my hands wasn’t really acceptable, and also because
their slight, blue faces reminded me too much of velociraptors (an animal that
I’m more afraid of than anything else, and yes I know they’re extinct and that
the revival processes described by Jurassic Park are fraught with scientific
issues), I proceeded to drop some pellets on the ground and run away with the
five-foot tall flightless birds.
There are some good
pictures of me being stricken with fear when those damn birds approached, but
the main star of the show was the kangaroos. Most of the red kangaroos were
small, but really hungry, continually coming back for more. They were quite
timid, not hopping around like mad (though kangaroos doing this might be a
total figment of my imagination), and dutifully ate from the feed in my hand.
This free rang area was really the opening act, because a larger, more
populated area with nary an emu was awaiting us.
The next area wasn’t as big, but there were kangaroos
galore, this time of the white variety. Most were adults, about three to four
feet tall. We were first greeted by one regal kangaroo at the beginning who
would stand on its two feet gracefully, basically as a statue. Then came
another similar posed kangaroo who was so still and calm that I could grab its
hand and faux shaking hands with Sir Kanga Roo. In the back was a slew of
kangaroos feeding on grass waiting for us to come and approach. By the time I
got halfway there, two of the kangaroos hopped right on over to me. These were
slightly more aggressive kangaroos. Some even swiped their hands at my hand
holding the feed. These were kangaroos that really wanted food. Except those
that didn’t, and would aggressively hop away as I walked closer.
Soon, Lisa yelled over to me to come over, that she saw the
real Cup de Grace, a baby joey peeking out of the kangaroo’s pouch. I know that
the pouches are the defining train of marsupials, but amidst the excitement of
watching kangaroos parade around me and eating out of my hand, I kind of forgot
about the whole joey in the pouch thing. That was until Lisa pointed it out. I
kept trying to capture a picture of one of them, but the main joey was so shy
that it became like a game of whack-a-mole, trying to capture it before it went
back into the pouch. I finally got a decent picture of it, but trying to see one
for an extended period of time overtook taking scores of pictures as the main
objective.
We finally got tired of trying to catch the mole, and left
the free range area to see the final two members of the Australian Marsupials
in the park. First was the wombat, a cute sounding animal that is really cute
in its stuffed animal form, but to my slight dismay, was a fat little hairy
groundhog that wobbled around its walled off enclosure. It was still cute, but
not really that adorable. They are far bigger and far fatter than I would have
imagined. The other was the koala boar, which is basically every bit as cute
and cuddly as I imagined.
The koalas were all sleeping on branches in their enclosure,
and I mercilessly tried to get it to wake up. I mainly resorted to throwing the
remaining feed at it, and while I embodied Clayton Kershaw with my feed pellet
tossing, hitting it square in the face at least 5 times, it didn’t even budge.
Man, those koalas sleep deeply, snoring (I assume, since it’s not audible) away
up in the branches. After the koalas, and a quick walk through the reptile
area, we left as the sun was setting and headed back to the guesthouse. The
rest of the day was spent watching the Saturday Night Footy matches and eating
great pizza as an extended family in the guesthouse. What better way to end a
day full of marsupials and joeys and pouches and fat wombats than watch Footy.
