Koalas and Kangaroos

On Monday morning, I called home, as my parents finished up their Sunday evening. They told me about their Feast plans, including packing, and I shared my planned adventure for the day—meeting koalas!

Since I haven’t been able to see any koalas or kangaroos in the wild yet, I did some research and found out that Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary had a koala encounter available, during which you could not just see them, but pet one.

As it turns out, the sanctuary housed multiple animals. This included many varieties of birds, including cockatoos and kookaburras. A few others included dingoes, two separate tanks with a platypus each, a petting zoo with farm animals, and best of all, kangaroos.

The kangaroo encounter was by far my favorite. Visitors were allowed to enter a fenced-in area and interact with the kangaroos, including feeding and petting them. These were a smaller, tamer variety. I didn’t see any joeys in their mothers’ pouches, but I got to feed and pet several. One large, muscular male kangaroo stuck his snout all the way into the bag of food and ate most of what I had. However, they were all gentle and didn’t mind being petted, even the biggest ones. The kangaroos’ fur was course, but soft.

I also spent a lot of time watching and photographing the koalas. Although they were mostly asleep, I did see a few move around, eat, and even walk across the ground. I saved the koala encounter for last, and spent a couple minutes petting a koala named Perkins. He was awake and eating eucalyptus, and his three-layered fur felt like wool.

When I left the koala sanctuary, I stopped at a craft store on the way home to pick up materials for a crochet project I can work on in my free time. A grabbed a quick dinner, then spent the rest of my time at the AirBnb relaxing and planning the next day.