Koalas, Echidnas and Emus, Oh My!

Naturally, one wants to see ALL the animals when one ventures to Australia, and this trip did not disappoint though there were some notable absences along the way.

First on the list is always the cute, cuddly marsupials. I knew from past experience that it is very difficult to find koalas in the wild, so while we were in Melbourne, I researched places not too far away where we’d have a fighting chance of seeing one or two. Up came French island, in the same bay east of Port Philip Bay as Philip island, which is known for its fairy penguins, beaches and the town of Cowes.

I’d never heard of French Island, and neither had any Australian I mentioned it to, even people who’ve lived in Melbourne all their lives. It was an hour’s drive to the ferry that takes you to the island—a small boat that takes 15 minutes or so to cross the bay from Stony Point.

Once you arrive at the unremarkable, flat island, you walk to the end of the jetty, pick up one of the battered bicycles parked there and cycle 3 km to the general store, where you formally rent a bike.

The ride to the general store on an undersized pedal-power bike with only a few gears over a rough gravel road on a day when the temps were in the 32C vicinity was a bit brutal, but about halfway there, what should come strolling across the road, completely unconcernedly but a big, fuzzy koala, walking awkwardly on all fours and occasionally sitting in the shade to rest.

Not wanting to scare it, I stayed back, so only got to film him/her from the rear. But it was a great start to the day!

At the store we traded the terrible bikes for the 2 e-bikes they had- souped up things with throttles that flew along with not much effort on our part—which was nice because the roads were washboard and gravel and it took all our effort not to get jostled off our bikes. The woman at the store gave us a map and told us where we might see more koalas, and off we went.

Our destination was a kind of makeshift picnic area in a grove of gums where someone had left some old garden furniture and a table, where we planned to have lunch.

It was peaceful and relatively cool there and when we were finished eating, Tom said to me ‘why don’t you walk around and see if you can spot any koalas.’ I dutifully complied, walked about 20 feet to the nearest eucalypt, looked up and said ‘well, there’s one’.

An adorable adult koala, napping peacefully in the fork of the tree about 10 feet above our heads, didn’t seem to mind our presence at all, and even opened its eyes a bit to scrutinize us before stretching and going back to sleep.

Down the road, we encountered several more sleeping koalas, one quite small, and admired them all.

Spot the koala behind me!

Mission accomplished, it was time to return to the store, hot, tired but very satisfied at having seen koalas and ridden bikes for the first time in months. We reluctantly traded in our zippy e-bikes for the punishing ride back to the ferry (still better than walking 3 km in the heat), where we left the bangers at the jetty and rode the little ferry back to our car.

We also saw scores of kangaroos, as mentioned in a previous post, at various points along the south coast of NSW, some legitimately in the wild, many grazing on grass in fenced rangeland, and a couple in the botanical gardens at Eurobodalla.

They were plentiful in that area, but when we went to the outback, hopeful of seeing some big red kangaroos, we saw only a few gray ones and those very fleetingly, though we sadly encountered literally dozens of dead roos on the roads leading out of Broken Hill. One I caught on video for a few seconds that I think might have been a walleroo—no, not a kangaroo/wallaby cross but a completely different species of hopping marsupial, that is more compact than a kangaroo and larger than a wallaby.

There is another uniquely Australian animal that I hoped but did not really expect to see that, while decidedly not cuddly, is nonetheless adorable. The echidna, a kind of cross between a porcupine and a hedgehog is shy, active mostly at night, and usually quite elusive. However, while we were staying in Paradise, Bill, who has an uncanny eye for spotting wildlife, pointed out a couple while we were on various walks—but the darn things had disappeared into the bush before we ever caught sight of them.  

But one afternoon, returning from an excursion to the beach, we came back to Bill’s house to find not one but two large echidnas just chilling under the back steps. They didn’t move when we arrived, and one, who was facing towards us, casually raised its little head and laid its little pointed snout on the step and looked up at us- definitely a wildlife highpoint of the trip!

Another iconic Australian animal I hadn’t even dreamed of seeing in the wild surprised the heck out of us by appearing all over the place in the outback was the emu. I really had not expected that, having never seen one in the wild when I lived there. The first pair I spotted just outside of Broken Hill and I nearly made Tom drive off the road, I got so excited. I made him stop and go back so I could take some photos, not certain if I’d ever see another one. Boy, was I wrong!

The next day, on the way out to Silverton we spotted an entire herd (flock?gang?) of them, and then we saw them everywhere, to the point where we just stopped pointing them out, they were so common. Who knew?

They are such weird birds, that even when we became a little inured to their presence, I never really lost my wonderment at their weirdness. When they run, their big, droopy tail feathers flop up and down hilariously. They are quite a sight, and look very dinosaur-ish.

One creature I didn’t have on my Australian mammal bingo card was the grey headed flying fox—a ‘mega bat’ that roosts in large colonies and feeds on fruit, flowers and pollen.

Bendigo has a large transient population in its central park, and they are extremely noisy and quite active all day long. I tried to get a good video of them flying, but it was dangerous standing around under the trees they were roosting in as there was a veritable poop shower going on below!

Beyond the cute and the weird, Australia is also known for its venomous and deadly creatures and we experienced a few of those as well. One venomous critter ubiquitous in Oz is fearsome looking but harmless to humans, though they can give one quite a scare: the huntsman spider. 

A full grown one can be as big as a dinner plate, and the jump! They frequent houses, and we encountered one in our bedroom in Paradise. We named him Henry Huntsman and he remained in the room the entire week we were there, usually high up on a wall, though on the final day, when we were stripping the bed, we found him just behind where Tom’s head had been not an hour earlier…..

A truly dangerous creature common in Australia is the red bellied black snake, one of a number of deadly snakes in the country. While walking in the Eurobodalla botanical garden, I nearly stepped on one about 3 feet long that was fully stretched out on a path. I thought it was a stick!

It never moved while I circled back to take a photo.

Not 5 minutes later, we saw a different one curled up on a rock, sunning itself. Lucky neither of us if freaked out by snakes and spiders!

Besides deadly, venomous creatures and cute, cuddly marsupials, Australia is known for its bird life. As mentioned in a previous post, I was awakened the very first morning in Australia with the sound of a Kookaburra, which was a delight. In the Sydney suburb of Epping we saw (and heard) an array of birds, including sulphur-crested cockatoos and white, (whose screaming squawk and tendency to fly around in flocks, Tom decided, made them the worst Australian bird, despite their striking appearance) and some pretty green parrots.

Along the way we also saw black cockatoos (which are very messy eaters!) and galahs, but few rosellas, rainbow lorikeets, or other colorful avians that used to abound in the cities and countryside.

It seemed to me that in the past 50 years, Australia’s bird populations have crashed, which is very sad.

At various watery places we encountered herons and comorants, pelicans and Cape Barren geese, and there were plenty of the ‘garden variety’ birds like magpies, mynas, and the like, and of course the ever present white ibis.

In Melbourne we did not find the aforementioned scavenging in the parks as in Sydney, its place taken instead by the swamp hen, a prettily colored bird with the most ridiculously enormous feet.

Random other critters that crossed our paths included this guy, which might be someone’s escaped iguana—not sure at all if it’s a native or not.

Despite a few disappointments, all in all, we were incredibly lucky to see as much wildlife as we did without having to go to a zoo or nature park. Australia is a land of wonders, and wondrous animals, birds, reptiles and insects too!