Sydney Day 4 - Featherdale
08/27/08 02:03 Filed in: Family,
climbing
Today we trekked out to Blacktown, a western suburb
of Sydney (even further west than where we are in the
Olympic Park.) Our destination was the Featherdale
wildlife park which touted kangaroos and other
Australian animals. We went with Holly and Shannon
Lochridge (TX) and Kirky Olsen (CO). Kirky’s going to
school at CU/Boulder. Here’s a shot of Kirky and
Chauncey on the train ride to Blacktown:
It exceeded all our expectations mainly because it was so up-close and personal with the animals. We were able to pick up and hold a wallaby which is like a kangaroo, but smaller with coarser hair.
Man, these animals are cute. Ali was the first one brave enough to pick up a Wallaby and had no trouble:
This is one I made friends with:
They had a whole section where dozens of these guys were cruising around and you could hand feed them. Amongst them were Emus which were tame but aggressively after the same food. You buy the food and put it in an ice-cream cone to hold it and the animals eat the cones, too. While Chauncey was feeding a Wallaby, an Emu came up behind her and plucked the cone right out of her hand and startled her. It was really funny.
Here are a couple of kangaroos which were just sunning themselves. I walked right up next to them to take this shot. They were extremely tame and completely unfazed by peple walking around them. I figured they’d be a little skittinsh just from getting their tails stepped on but they didn’t seem at all concerned.
Some other marsupials were the Wombat, Koala, and Tasmanian Devil - the latter is fierce like our badgers. Here’s a wombat:
They had several dozen Koalas which were very close to look at and one in particular was out for petting (see the album). Here’s one feeding on some eucalyptus branches:
Despite its ferocity, this Tasmanian Devil decided to flop on a log and sun himself:
Besides all the marsupials, they had a huge variety birds and especially had a lot of cool owls. This one was called a barking owl. If you went up to his cage and said “Woo, woo”, he would do it back and it sounded a lot like a dog barking “Woof, woof” in an owl accent.
It was a fantastic display, but here are two special pictures of the day.
First, is the winner of the odd-couple award:
And last, I found a Bronco fan in Australia and here he is:
Today’s pictures are in the Featherdale album.
Tomorrow starts the competition. Opening cermemony is at 8a, climbing starts around 9:15. We have to be on the bus by 6:15a to head to the venue. The kids are ready to get down to business.
It exceeded all our expectations mainly because it was so up-close and personal with the animals. We were able to pick up and hold a wallaby which is like a kangaroo, but smaller with coarser hair.
Man, these animals are cute. Ali was the first one brave enough to pick up a Wallaby and had no trouble:
This is one I made friends with:
They had a whole section where dozens of these guys were cruising around and you could hand feed them. Amongst them were Emus which were tame but aggressively after the same food. You buy the food and put it in an ice-cream cone to hold it and the animals eat the cones, too. While Chauncey was feeding a Wallaby, an Emu came up behind her and plucked the cone right out of her hand and startled her. It was really funny.
Here are a couple of kangaroos which were just sunning themselves. I walked right up next to them to take this shot. They were extremely tame and completely unfazed by peple walking around them. I figured they’d be a little skittinsh just from getting their tails stepped on but they didn’t seem at all concerned.
Some other marsupials were the Wombat, Koala, and Tasmanian Devil - the latter is fierce like our badgers. Here’s a wombat:
They had several dozen Koalas which were very close to look at and one in particular was out for petting (see the album). Here’s one feeding on some eucalyptus branches:
Despite its ferocity, this Tasmanian Devil decided to flop on a log and sun himself:
Besides all the marsupials, they had a huge variety birds and especially had a lot of cool owls. This one was called a barking owl. If you went up to his cage and said “Woo, woo”, he would do it back and it sounded a lot like a dog barking “Woof, woof” in an owl accent.
It was a fantastic display, but here are two special pictures of the day.
First, is the winner of the odd-couple award:
And last, I found a Bronco fan in Australia and here he is:
Today’s pictures are in the Featherdale album.
Tomorrow starts the competition. Opening cermemony is at 8a, climbing starts around 9:15. We have to be on the bus by 6:15a to head to the venue. The kids are ready to get down to business.