to touch the fur of a koala

Not wanting to see ALL the animals from ALL over the world, I asked if there was a petting zoo which would allow me to interact with native Australian animals. Tze brought me to the Featherdale Wildlife Park.


The AUD20 ticket was quite reasonable, I thought. They gave us a VIP passport which would enable us to collect a stamp everytime we spot a specified Aussie animal along the Wildlife Trail.


The first animals to greet us were the swamp wallabies.


Even the kid peeked out of the mother's pouch to see what the commotion was all about.


Caged next to the wallabies was this funny looking bird called the Southern Cassowary. It's the third largest flightless bird, smaller in size after the ostrich and emu.


Later I found out that the cassowary is now considered the most dangerous bird in the world! No wonder they had it caged. It might just come pecking at me for making fun of it.


I was thrilled when I saw the koalas. But they were sleeping. ALL Most of them!


But this one started to move.


I thought it was going to wake up.


But no, after stretching a li'l, it just went back to sleep. Just like that. In that position. =.='


The koala next to it also started moving. Walked across the branch...


...only to show me its spotted bums!



They were all in various sleeping positions. I didn't pay AUD20 to see sleeping koalas!


So you can imagine my excitement when I saw the petting area where they allowed visitors to feed the koalas. There was a big group of aunties' speaking loud Cantonese, must be from Hong Kong who scared away the first koala. The zookeeper had to bring in another one to entertain the aunties.


I had to wait quite a bit before they were satisfied taking individual pictures with the frightened koala. Finally I had my turn and managed to feed it some eucalyptus leaves. Its fur felt quite soft, not unlike a teddy bear's!


Cassowary's relative, the emu came poking its head, wanting some attention.


Since emu was quite scary looking, I hurriedly went to the kangaroos instead. Purchasing some food, I tried to feed it.


And still, the attention-hungry emu came to us and snatched the food I bought for the kangaroo. Poor kangaroo just went about picking up the food from the ground while emu gobbled up the wafer cone.


So I got another one and made sure kangaroo had its fair share.


Like the koalas, the kangaroos were mostly lying down. I was expecting it to do some tricks, or at the least, jump! No wonder the Aussies are also so laidback, must be something in the air or the water they drink.


Since the koalas and kangaroos were so inanimate, I got distracted by this colourful hairband.


And an albino peacock! If only it had spread opened its feathers, now that would be spectacular.


And an itchy albino kangaroo! Too much leaves in the ears, must be all that lying down.


And another animal lying down, the Australian dingo. With that, I had another item checked off my list of things to see/do in Australia - see fauna native to this continent :)