We're almost there...: A Fun Day in Australia!!!!!

This is a guest blog by Mira C. Mason.

We went to a wildlife park today. It was so cool. I was amazed at all the different animals & birds of all colours. We saw a cassowary.

It's a big endangered bird. I thought as soon as I saw it that it was stuffed but I was wrong. It was ALIVE!!!! With its colours red, blue and turquoise it was amazing. It had a crown like thing on the top of its head that's brown. Sooo cool!

Then we walked to a wooden walkway on posts. We saw black & yellow birds, red & purple birds and green birds. There were so many birds it looked like a rainbow after that we walked to a spot half way there. We saw a wallaby. It was a red legged wallaby. It was doing yoga, it had its tail tucked under itself so that it looked like it had a tail from its nose then suddenly I saw another. It hopped really high. Then we walked on.

I saw a really cool bird.... it was a parrot, a red and black one and beside it there was a yellow & black parrot. They were yelling at each other in a squawking sort of noise. Then I saw another parrot. It was black & yellow like the other one but it was on a cage. I didn't know what the cage was for but I knew that it was not for the parrot. Then I looked harder... & harder... & harder then I saw it. It was for a koala.

I knew that because there was a koala munching on eucalyptus. It looked so soft and cuddly. I wanted to grab him but I didn't. I just yelled, " Mom... Kate.. Papa!!!" It was so exciting. I was jumping up and down. After a few minutes, they came. I showed them and they too got excited. We looked at him for a while then carried on looking at birds. After a little bit of walking, we found a cockatoo. It was white with a little yellow feather on the top of his head. Mommy, Kate and I said hello to him and he said hello. I was so surprised then me and Kate said hello again and he said it too then we tried again a third time but he didn't say hello then we left.

Kookaburra

Down the trail a little bit but we realized that the koala show was about to start. We walked back on to the koala station. On the back we saw 2 kookaburras on a log. They were black, brown and yellow. We tried to make them sing for us but they didn't.

Owl friend.

Then we saw an owl - he looked at us and looked bored. Then finally we made it back to the koala station. The lady talked about how Koalas eat, live, sleep and mark their territory. It was neat. After that, we went to a counter and got a ticket to hold a koala. It was a once in a life time experience. His name was Grizzly. He was very soft but at the same time kind of rough. He had sharp claws. Kate was too small to hold him so I held him. There was a man that took our photo and Papa took one too.

Mira, Grizzly and Kate

Then we walked to the grasslands. Mommy got some food to feed the kangaroos and wallabies. We went in the enclosure. As soon as we went in the path forked left and there were some wallabies. So we went left first. We took some feed out of the brown paper bag and bent down to try and feed them At first I was nervous but after a while I found it was fun. They are very soft. I know this because they let me pet them. They licked it out of our hands. Some of them were fat from people feeding them. After that we decided to go right instead so we walked back a couple of meters and went right. There were lots of birds trying to get some feed. We gave them some but not much because the kangaroos were coming up next. Then all of a sudden hopping around were kangaroos, 10-15 of them. One of them beside the path was really big. We thought a Big Red maybe? He stared to come closer and closer and then he came and fed out of our hands. He was so cool. He licked all the food out of our hands then waited for more. Next we went to the free kangaroos. They are kind of very odd looking kind of like a koala and kangaroo cross.

Mira and Big Red?

Kate feeding a kangaroo

Tree Kangaroo

After that we went to the crocs. We were almost on the bridge when we saw an emu. Mom wanted to try to feed it and it pecked the food out of her hand almost biting it. Papa, Kate & I were all on the bridge but the emu wouldn't let mom on. After a minute of trying to get by the emu finally gave in and Mommy ran for it.

Mom feeing a Emu

The bridge was very windy. It took a while for us to see the crocs because they are so good at camouflage but we saw them. They are 1 meter to 1.5 meters long.