Roos!

Our romp in Oz climaxed in a road trip to Phillip Island – a forested oasis just beyond the Melbourne city limits. Rach’s mother’s friends own a beach house on the placid bay, so we packed our thermals and the children for a weekend of feeding kangaroos and penguin-watching.

We started in a koala sanctuary, where we walked through eucalyptus forests and saw happy koalas in their somewhat natural habitat. Some of them had tiny koala joeys in their pouches, and came right out to meet us. Unfortunately, in this part of Australia (the state of Victoria), touching and holding koalas is prohibited, but it was amazing to see the lethargic little animals bopping around and climbing trees.

At sunset, we bought front row seats to watch hundreds of fairy penguins waddle in from their day’s work of hunting in the ocean. Fairy penguins have blue backs and white bellies, and stand less than one foot tall. They burrow in the grassy hills just beyond the sandy beach, and we were able to quietly follow them home for the night. Their waddling legs are amazingly cute, and they often stop to preen and chirp at each other in a uniquely sweet way.

We bought Shaun and Rach a massive poker set, and once the children went to bed, we shuffled the cards, cracked a few Heinekens, and gambled long into the night. Rach employed a hardcore no fear approach, which ultimately won out over Kim’s conservative style and Shaun and Dan’s generally erratic betting styles.

Next day came the highlight where we visited a much less well-kempt park where we could feed and interact with the animals directly. We started by feeding and petting wallabies, which look like small kangaroos. The first ones just hopped right up to us as soon as we entered the park. As we fed them, little joey heads popped out of their pouches, so we fed the joeys too.

Then, more koalas who were mostly asleep, crazy ducks, majestic sea birds, cockatoos who kept saying “Hello Cocky!”, wombats which are fat tank-like beasts who burrow underground, and finally, a several-acre paddock of kangaroos and emus. In case you have any fond thoughts of emus (pronounced “ee-mee-yoo” not “ee-moo”), you should know that they are huge, horrible ostrich-like creatures with wild, erratic necks, powerful clawed feet, and a dense grotesquely feathered behind. They approached us immediately and began to frighten and harass us all. Matt was the first to go screaming through the field, chased by a bird three times his size. Luckily, Kim was somehow unafraid of these beasts, and she shouted at them and swatted them away like flies. Shaun began to mock them by mimicking their pecking neck movements as Dan tried to feed them food pellets as a diversion. Little Kyla kept running towards them with her hugging arms outstretched, causing much alarm for us all.

Intermingled with the emus were dozens of the most beautiful and friendly kangaroos we had ever met. They look like oddly curious wise men, and they stand and scratch themselves inappropriately.The sweetness of the roos and wallabies more than made up for our initial sadness about Victoria’s koala-fondling prohibition. Kim was in heaven feeding and petting kangaroos whilst defending us from the wrath of the emus.

It was with heavy hearts that we hugged farewell to our dear Peels, and we stepped forwards towards the throbbing chaos of the third world.

Love,
Dan&Kim

katerina posted on 2007-09-27 at 10:43 pm

it's about time! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh. you are making me miss you so bad! and i laughed SO hard! and really, it's entirely unfair for you guys to be gloating about all of this magic you're experiencing. and i love you for it. and kim, i love that you're such a badass!!

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Mom posted on 2007-09-25 at 2:14 pm

Wow!! This Phillip Island sounds like it's an exciting place to visit. Looking forward to see pictures especially the fairy penguins. We will stay tuned. With love,hugs and kisses, Mom oxoxoxoxox

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