First, I went to the Lone Pine Koala Reserve. It is a reserve for animals native to Australia. I started by petting a kangaroo. The kangaroos were super chilled out and used to humans. They sell kangaroo food and you can feed them, too, but I walked backwards through the place so I just pet a few instead.

Then I wandered through a lot of exhibits until I found the Cuddle a Koala place. So, I held a koala. The koala was a total ham for the camera. He looked right at it. Then he groped me. I think we had a moment. Then he pooped on my foot. Oh well, still a wild animal.

At the reserve, I saw a couple of cassowary. They look like dinosaurs. I think it is the giant head ridge. I also spent awhile talking to an emu. She was looking at me funny, and no one else around spoke English. I thought it was worth a try.

From there, I spent awhile wandering through the koala exhibits. They separated out the ages of koalas, as they would separate themselves in the wild. They labeled them with things like “Kindergarten” and “Retirement Home” so us unenlightened ones would know who we were looking at. The koalas are very cute, but I can’t tell a huge difference between the old and the young ones.

After the koalas, I went and watch a platypus playing for a bit. His house didn’t have good lighting for pictures, but I got a short video. He kept swimming in circles. I think he was just bored and goofing off. There was also a neat skeleton of a platypus that showed the structure of the platypus and how the bits all fit together.

From there I went to bird watching. There were a lot of birdies. Most of them were caged. There were a lot of them, but I’m not a birder so I can’t tell you very much about them. The lorekeets were not caged and were very friendly. They have bird feed for them and you can hold the trays up. The Lorekeets come and sit on the edge to drink. I felt like a birdy statue of liberty. Unfortunately there was no one around to take a picture of me being silly. Then a bird peed on my arm and I decided it was time to move on.

I wanted to see a wombat. Their habitat enclosure was flooded, so there weren’t too many of them out and about. All I managed to see was a wombat butt. He was hiding in a log at the time. I asked him to turn around and look at me, but he wasn’t really interested. Oh well. 

In short, I held a koala and petted a kangaroo. Those were things to check off the bucket list.