Tuesday – November 13, 2018
We woke up to a beautiful sunny day in Sydney with the temperature about 67 degrees Fahrenheit. During the week we traveled around the interior of Australia, we never saw any wild animals. Australia is known for its exotic only-place-in-the-world animals and we wanted to see them before we left the country. So today we went to Taronga Zoo which is a short ferry ride across the harbour from the CBD of Sydney. That’s another cruise ship tied up at the dock in the photo below. There seems to be a new one every other day.
After a 10-minute ferry ride, we boarded an ariel tram-way to the top of the steep hill where the zoo is located. It’s a fun ride because the cars float over the zoo and travelers can look down on the animal’s pens.
The first exhibit we saw was the “Koala Walkabout.” We did the walking. The koala, which are known to sleep for 18 to 20 hours a day, were dozing off. But cute anyway!
We heard very loud squawking and followed the sound to a peacock who was strutting his stuff:
On our way to the Aviary – bird enclosure, I spotted a “wild” animal. I guess this Australian water dragon lives in the zoo on his own and easily finds food. Or he escaped from one of the tanks in the reptile house. I did a Google search to find out that this lizard is common in and around Sydney and New South Wales. It was about 10 inches long.
My photos in the Aviary weren’t very good, but here is a picture of an Eclectus Parrot:
We went into the building that houses nocturnal animals and I tried to take photos but none of them worked well. Too dark. Outside the building I saw an echidna and took a picture. They’re also known as spiny anteaters and are one of four mammals that lay eggs. We saw several platypus inside a building, as well as wombats, bandicoots, quokkas, quolls, and Tasmanian devils.
We followed signs to the “Kangaroos” and were surprised to see a sign near the entrance that read “Hop In.” So we entered the kangaroo enclosure and saw kangaroos, wallabies, and emus “up close and personal.” All the animals totally ignored the people walking along the path through their cage! The kangaroos were resting and the wallabies were eating. Unbelievable!!
Some kind of pelican:
A Goodfellow’s tree kangaroo asleep in a tree fern:
Komodo dragon lizard – also sleeping:
Australian brushturkey aka bush turkey picking up crumbs on a table in the snack bar of the zoo:
It was fun to finally see Australian animals! We rode the ferry back to downtown Sydney:
