Somewhere along the Great Ocean Road there's a little town called Kennett River, and if you turn off onto Grey River Road be ready for some Australian wildlife run-ins. It's a gravelly, bumpy dirt road that goes through a forest largely made up of Eucalyptus trees. I remember we were driving along the road waiting to see some wildlife and we rounded a curve and there on the side of the road were two kangaroos! I was so shocked to see some, (hey, it was my first kanga sighting!), that I shrieked, "Marsupials!!!!" right into Joy's ear. They must have heard me because they bounded into the woods out of sight before I could get my camera out. We saw a few more groups of them in the distance after that, though too far away for good pictures.
We also managed to find a koala! Koalas are known to be very lethargic, brainless creatures, and I found this to be very true. He only cared for his leaves and the one time he looked up mid-munch to notice the tourists gawking at him, he looked vacant and a little bit confused. After he gave up trying to figure us out, he went back to eating the leaf that was hanging out of his mouth.
On our way back to the main road, some tourist buses had parked at the beginning of the road and some idiot tourists were actually shaking, violently, a tree limb that a koala was resting on. The koala was hanging on for dear life and I'm sure he had to be thinking, "Flipping tourists!!! Go bother a kangaroo!!!" I don't know if they were just hoping to get any response out of the poor thing, or if they were hoping it would flop to the ground and come play with them? I don't know, but it was ridiculous. There was also a group of bright red parrots and one managed to land on a lady's head. Quite funny, and the lady had this, "Soooo, now what?" look on her face. Her friend was taking pictures and laughing.
These kangaroo pictures are from a different day on a different beach, Pebbly Beach close to Sydney. A local hyped it up, so we were expecting to see a lot of kangaroos on this beach, but only ended up seeing two. This kangaroo was real friendly, though I was nervous to be so close because I kept expecting his switch to flip and for him to drop kick me and claw my guts out - never happened. Yes, my imagination ran wild, that's how I roll. He actually let me pet him (very soft and wooly), which annoyed him, as he flinched when I touched him, and he was wondering why I wasn't giving him food, as he kept looking at me expectantly.
The pictures of me with the kanga are courtesy of
Brian Barker.
