Category: zoo

When you visit Australia, you want to see kangaroos. Don’t ask me why, but you do. It is the iconic animal of that country and they are very common and you see signs everywhere warning of the possibility of kangaroos crossing, just as in Canada we have signs warning of deer crossing.

But actually spotting a kangaroo is not as common as you would think. When we were visiting our daughter and her fiancé in May, we didn’t actually see a kangaroo until we visited the Margaret River area. The first one we saw was road kill. In fact, the risk of hitting a kangaroo in wilderness areas is high enough that many people fit their vehicles with roo bars – sort of like cow catchers for kangaroos to protect the vehicle from damage. Our daughter reported a work colleague had her car badly damaged from hitting a roo a couple of weeks ago.

But we did see some troops of kangaroos over the next few days in Margaret River, and on our wine country tour we spotted a number of them hopping across the road ahead of us. We even spotted a couple out in the vineyards.

And in Perth, you can spot them in open fields occasionally, and on golf courses. Recently we were going to family dinner and spotted quite a few in a field. Jamie pulled a u-ey and parked nearby and we got our first close look at them. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera handy.

But if you really want to get up close and personal with kangaroos, I really recommend the Caversham Wildlife Park near Perth. It’s about half an hour northeast of the city in the town of Whiteman.

Our daughter took us there recently and we had a wonderful time. The park is home to many of the species indigenous to Australia. The privately owned and operated park receives no government funding. It charges an admission fee of $27 for adults, $12 for children and $19 for seniors.

The park is divided into various sections, each featuring different types of animals. And there are special presentations to make your visit even more enjoyable. But the highlight for us, and probably for most people, are the kangaroos. There are a lot of them. You enter the kangaroo exhibit area through double gates, each about twenty feet apart. Sort of an airlock to keep kangaroos from sneaking out as visitors enter.

You actually get up close and personal with the kangaroos. You can pet them (but no touching joeys or the pouches) and feed them. There is a large bin filled with food pellets for that purpose. The kangaroos are very tame, quite used to humans.

We were there in February and a good number of the roos had joeys. We saw a lot of tails and legs sticking out of pouches, and the occasional head as well. As often as not, the roos are completely tucked inside, not visible except for the bulge in mom’s tummy.

The park has a lot of birds on display from all over Australia, everything from cockatoos and budgerigars to black swans, owls, ducks and other water fowl and even an eagle, a buzzard and a couple of emus. The enclosures are, for the most part, quite large and spacious with netting over the top to keep the birds from flying away.

We went in the reptile house, but it had frogs, lizards and pythons. It did not have any of Australia’s indigenous poisonous snakes of which there are a great many. I have seen the poisonous dugite three times in the wild now. One of them was this morning, a small juvenile less than a foot long slithering across our path as we walked the dog. These juveniles are considered aggressive and dangerous despite their small size.

Meanwhile back at Caversham, our schedule told us there was a special 2 PM up close showing of wombats and friends. So we headed over. Several curators were there with different animals which we could see up close and sometimes touch. These included a bobtail lizard, a couple of owls, a kookaburra, a python, a bettong, and, of course, a rather fat and sleepy wombat.

We had seen the bobtail lizard in the wild a few times and told to avoid getting too close as they have a very strong jaw like a snapping turtle. But this fellow was raised in captivity and quite used to people and not dangerous.

We couldn’t touch the owls but they sat on perches less than two feet away so we could look at them up close. But we could touch the python, though Sarah and Janis declined.

A curator sat on a bench with the large wombat on her lap, lying back quite contendedly. He was also raised in captivity and quite used to people. I asked her (the curator, not the wombat) about the critter and she said they could be quite fierce in the wild. They can run fast and their chief defence is a bony plate on their lower back. They have only a stubby tail.

This bony plate is quite hard and the wombat has strong leg muscles. If pursued, usually by a dingo which is its main predator, the wombat will wait until the right moment and smash its bony back into the dingo’s face, breaking its nose.

Wikipedia relates that the wombat will often duck into a burrow and when the dingo moves its head over its hind quarters to get at its fleshy upper back, the wombat will thrust with its legs, smashing the dingo’s skull against the ceiling of the burrow killing it.

Our wombat looked more like sleepy-eyed Joe than a fierce animal. Looks can be deceiving.

Later in the afternoon, the koalas were on display. We had passed the enclosure earlier, but you could only see through a window. Now the koala pen was open and we could venture in. Several curators were on hand to talk about the animal and there were two we were allow to pet. Their fur is not as soft as you might expect. It was actually a bit coarse. But they are cute all the same. Several were sound asleep in their eucalyptus trees.

We saw many other animals that day including a small crocodile, a quokka, a quoll (Aussies seem to like the letter Q), wallabies, a Tasmanian devil, giant flying fox bats and a couple of dingos. All in all, a great excursion.

And if you want to make a full day of it, there are other attractions nearby including three transport museums, one devoted to tractors, children’s play areas, an operating vintage tram and shops and a restaurant.

Links of Interest

• Caversham Wildlife Park
• Whiteman Park Attractions
• Other pictures from the Caversham Wildlife Park

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