I've wandered around some good geology sites, I've been confused by the southern stars, I've visited the Sydney Opera House, and last weekend I finished the list of reasons to visit Australia: I've seen koalas and kangaroos!  (This does NOT, however, mean that I'm done seeing Australia, and should come home just because I've finished the list of top reasons to visit Australia.)

Last Sunday, Richard, Bianca, Bianca's roommate Kat, and I took a half-hour train ride out to the Symbio Wildlife Park.  Australia has many standard zoos, but it also has an abundance of privately-owned wildlife parks that are way more hands-on.  We quite happily joined the large number of children under the age of six in all of the hands-on parts.

There were a lot of animals you could pet easily, and some, like peacocks, even wandered freely around the park.

The park focused on Australian animals, and they seemed to have all the requisite stereotypical ones aside from a platypus.  They did, however, have the other monotreme - the echidna - who was very cute!  He never stood still. 

They had an aviary that you could go into, with all sorts of parrots and such flying around.  Richard got the cockatoos to quite clearly say "hello" to him.  In one corner was a tawny frogmouth, which looked very much like an owl.  As we watched, a rainbow lorikeet landed directly on his head and spent quite a while sitting there.  We have absolutely no idea why.  We were then watching some lorikeets that were walking on the ground by one of the cages.  I bent down and held out my hand, and one of them jumped on.  Then he flew to my head, and two more simultaneously landed on my backpack.  Nobody else in our group could coax a lorikeet to climb onto them... I must have been wearing the right colors or something!

 Then we went to a reptile show, during which we could not hear the presenter all the time because of sheep and goats bleating outside (we're not sure why sheep and goats were displayed at the animal park with wombats and Tasmanian devils, but apparently they were).  The presenters brought out a turtle and a couple of lizards that we all got to pet, and then they introduced us to Ollie, the olive python.  At the end we could all stand in line and get a chance to hold Ollie, and we quite readily joined the line of small children for this opportunity.  He was really a very nice python.

My favorite part of the park was the kangaroo area.  There's a whole lot of kangaroos - I'd guess at least 20 or 30 - that just hop around freely in an area where visitors can come in and pet them.  Kangaroos are soft!  They gave us paper bags full of dried grass to feed the kangaroos.  Kat had about three of them around her when one abruptly grabbed her bag of food, tore it open, and spread grass all over Kat.  It then proceeded to eat from Kat's shirt.  Their claws are sharp, but they certainly weren't looking to hurt us.  And we got to see one with a joey in its pouch!  We spent quite a while playing with the kangaroos.

 At the end we went to a talk on koalas, and then they took us into a cage with two koalas who were awake for feeding time (they do sleep a lot!).  We all got to go up and pet the koalas.  They are also quite soft, but they don't smell particularly good.  They are, however, quite cute!