Kangaroos and Koalas

Time to see some of the native fauna. I’d say flora also, but aside from eucalyptus trees, some manzanita, and various other greenery, Australia doesn’t feature what I’d call exotic plants. We aren’t seeing the colorful flowers that are so impressive in Hawaii. Still, it’s very green compared to all the snow currently falling in Colorado.

Kangaroos and wallabies are akin to deer and elk in the US. They show up in open spaces and on roadsides toward dusk to graze. Sometimes they decide to cross the road and it doesn’t always end well for the ‘roo or the car – to the point that drivers are discouraged from being out past 7pm or so, and rental car companies definitely don’t cover the damages from a collision.

With all those warnings, I was a bit paranoid to drive to our first wildlife sighting because it didn’t start until 9pm (or maybe it was because I was driving on the left side). Southern Australia is home to the smallest penguins in the world, appropriately known as Little Penguins / Fairy Penguins. They’re only a foot tall and spend most of their time at sea – they come ashore after dark to feed their babies (we were just at the end of the chick season), or when it’s time to moult since they can’t swim without a full coat of feathers.

Little Penguins are cute! We couldn’t get any photos with the naturalist tour at night, so these are from a wildlife rescue facility we visited the next day. Kangaroo Island had devastating bush fires in 2019 and it created a need for rehab for a number of species.

I still laugh when I see a kangaroo hopping through the fields.

Turns out koala fur is quite soft. He (the koala) doesn’t care because they spend all their time 1) eating eucalyptus leaves, 2) sleeping, and 3) making babies. But moslty sleeping. Eucalyptus leaves take a lot of energy to digest – they are described as toxic or intoxicating for the koalas and as a result koalas rest a lot to recover from eating. Doesn’t seem very efficient to me. But they are still very pettable under the righr conditions.

The coastline is rugged in spots, and we checked it out – the water is COLD!

We still had to check out the beach, which had very fine and soft sand. We didn’t go to the sand dunes nearby but people board or slide down them. Howard just needed some sun time after a picnic on the sand.

After seeing all the animals at the rescue center I was determined to find a koala in the wild. They aren’t easy to spot and they mostly aren’t moving so you look for gray blobs sitting on a tree branch. We found this one about 10 feet off the ground, sleeping as usual. It’s on the large side so we think it was a male.

Same koala, closer up. Don’t you just want to cuddle him?

Lizards are common, pelicans, other only-in-Australia animals like echidnas and quokkas, and birds (I’m not good at Bird ID, so no photos of those).

KI is about 90 miles long and 35 miles wide, and has a total population of 4,500. People, that is. Koala population is about 18,000, kangaroos and wallabies unknown So it’s sparce area people-wise and feels remote even though it’s less than 20 miles from the mainland coast. People were patient and friendly and we enjoyed our visit there.

Nest stop: Great Barrier Reef.