**There were many memorable parts of my first, and as of now only, trip to Australia. I don't know if my two day trip out to Phillip Island was the best part of the trip, but it comes close. Mostly because of how great the kangaroo park was. It was everythikng I could've hoped out of getting my time with those adorable hoppers.**
RTW Trip: Day 77-78 (5/11-5/12) - Phillip Island
Day 77-78: Kanga & Roo
One of the main attractions of Australia is its wildlife, its beautifully unique collection of marsupials that crawl, run, swim and hop across that vast open land. Sadly, most of these animals don’t crawl, run, swim and hop across Victoria. These more urban areas that are devoid of kangaroos still have ‘Kangaroo Crossing’ and ‘Koala Crossing’ signs to give us poor travelers hope that, much like the deer that infest New Jersey, we might come across a Kangaroo hopping across the road. Thankfully, deep inside Phillip Island, there exists an Australian Wildlife farm, that isn’t as limiting as zoos while still not being like safaris or game parks, where enjoyment is tied up in the percentages of actually coming across those animals. No, this wildlife park is small and intimate enough to not get tiring or disappointing. You will come across animals, a lot of them. My sister went to this same park when she came to Australia, and out of all of the pictures of her trip I’ve seen, the ones that stick in my mind are the ones of her feeding and interacting with those kangaroos. I looked forward to a lot of things in my Australian trip, but most of the sites and city experiences are familiar to people who live in first world countries that speak English. Outside of meeting my family again, this is the thing I was looking forward to most about coming to Australia, and it was a great way to end my time there.
We left for Phillip Island on Saturday morning, getting to Phillip Island in decent time as we drove through open freeways for most of the ride. When we entered Phillip Island about an hour and fifteen minutes after we left Melbourne, the freeways ended and smaller roads winding through open fields inside a thin island with the water surrounded us on one side. We first drove to the tip of the island to the Hobbies; boardwalks winding up and down through the rocky tip of the island. In this area were naturally made and man-made penguin nesting holes. These penguins weren’t as cute and plentiful as those in South Africa, but the cute little birds were cozily nuzzled inside their little holes, escaping the abnormally hot late fall weather. After a nice little walk around the island tip and some nice pictures against a gorgeous backdrop we drove back to Cowes, the main city on Phillip Island.
Cowes is the main city in Phillip Island, but it is more accurately a town, and a small one at that. Our guesthouse was at one end of Cowes, and the small size of the town gave us a great opportunity to walk the distance of the town on the waterfront and back and not get close to being tired. We first went for a late lunch at ‘The Hotel’ a restaurant on the waterfront that they go to every time they go to Phillip Island. I had salt and pepper squid, which was really good. Oddly, they chose only that weird textured portion of the squid instead of the rings or the legs. From there we went back to the guesthouse and dropped Gavan back who had to finish an assignment, and left for the Wildlife Park.
The only problem with our plan is that no one could fully remember just where the park was, but we found it soon enough. The entrance is quite plain and simple, with a gravel parking lot and small wood cabin that serves as the entrance to the park. Behind lay amazing mysterious animals, and I didn’t know how great the experience would be.
The first part are a few cages housing the dingos, which to me were basically golden colored wolves, and the Tasmanian Devils, the little dog-like creatures that are far deadlier than they are cuddly. Next came the first free-range areas, with red kangaroos and emus. There weren’t many kangaroos in this area, probably because I’m not sure if they and emus are really friendly towards each other. The presence of the kangaroos was lessened with the presence of the emus. While Emus are also unique to Australia, they are quite scary, especially since they are more than ready to run over to anyone with kangaroo feed. Since I quickly decided that having them peck the little pellets of feed from my hands wasn’t really acceptable, and also because their slight, blue faces reminded me too much of velociraptors (an animal that I’m more afraid of than anything else, and yes I know they’re extinct and that the revival processes described by Jurassic Park are fraught with scientific issues), I proceeded to drop some pellets on the ground and run away with the five-foot tall flightless birds.
There are some good pictures of me being stricken with fear when those damn birds approached, but the main star of the show was the kangaroos. Most of the red kangaroos were small, but really hungry, continually coming back for more. They were quite timid, not hopping around like mad (though kangaroos doing this might be a total figment of my imagination), and dutifully ate from the feed in my hand. This free rang area was really the opening act, because a larger, more populated area with nary an emu was awaiting us.
The next area wasn’t as big, but there were kangaroos galore, this time of the white variety. Most were adults, about three to four feet tall. We were first greeted by one regal kangaroo at the beginning who would stand on its two feet gracefully, basically as a statue. Then came another similar posed kangaroo who was so still and calm that I could grab its hand and faux shaking hands with Sir Kanga Roo. In the back was a slew of kangaroos feeding on grass waiting for us to come and approach. By the time I got halfway there, two of the kangaroos hopped right on over to me. These were slightly more aggressive kangaroos. Some even swiped their hands at my hand holding the feed. These were kangaroos that really wanted food. Except those that didn’t, and would aggressively hop away as I walked closer.
Soon, Lisa yelled over to me to come over, that she saw the real Cup de Grace, a baby joey peeking out of the kangaroo’s pouch. I know that the pouches are the defining train of marsupials, but amidst the excitement of watching kangaroos parade around me and eating out of my hand, I kind of forgot about the whole joey in the pouch thing. That was until Lisa pointed it out. I kept trying to capture a picture of one of them, but the main joey was so shy that it became like a game of whack-a-mole, trying to capture it before it went back into the pouch. I finally got a decent picture of it, but trying to see one for an extended period of time overtook taking scores of pictures as the main objective.
We finally got tired of trying to catch the mole, and left the free range area to see the final two members of the Australian Marsupials in the park. First was the wombat, a cute sounding animal that is really cute in its stuffed animal form, but to my slight dismay, was a fat little hairy groundhog that wobbled around its walled off enclosure. It was still cute, but not really that adorable. They are far bigger and far fatter than I would have imagined. The other was the koala boar, which is basically every bit as cute and cuddly as I imagined.
The koalas were all sleeping on branches in their enclosure, and I mercilessly tried to get it to wake up. I mainly resorted to throwing the remaining feed at it, and while I embodied Clayton Kershaw with my feed pellet tossing, hitting it square in the face at least 5 times, it didn’t even budge. Man, those koalas sleep deeply, snoring (I assume, since it’s not audible) away up in the branches. After the koalas, and a quick walk through the reptile area, we left as the sun was setting and headed back to the guesthouse. The rest of the day was spent watching the Saturday Night Footy matches and eating great pizza as an extended family in the guesthouse. What better way to end a day full of mars
