Australia is the land of Kangaroos. But we have not yet met one! The only place we can see a Kangaroo in Sydney, is Zoo ! There is another species Koala, you can say it is like Panda.
There was a place nearby which they called Featherdale Wildlife Park, which turned out to be a place little bigger than our Panagal park J !
We had to take a bus after getting down from the train. On Sundays, the frequency of the buses is only once in an hour ! And we landed just when the bus just left ! That left us wait in the bus stand for an hour. It was noon by the time we reached the gates of the ‘Park’.
Once we had a look at it, and realised that it has all birds except a crocodile( which I doubt Krithi is still believing that it was a statue), some reptiles in a small room and then some Koalas and small kangaroos. And for that, the entry fee was A$18 !
The birds which can fly out were in cages, and the fats ones were out in small river-shaped pond (I would like to call it so, as it was supposed to look like a river and got some flow also, of recycling. But I hate to call a 100 meter -sort-of-river, a river).
That is it with them and we will move to Koalas. None of them are caged, and at places we never even had fences. The advertisement itself was ‘take a snap with Koala’. There are one or two kangaroos also in the open.
Koalas are the most wonderful creatures I have ever seen. They just somehow manage to be in between the branches of a tree, and that is it! You should be lucky to see it moving! It mostly will be sleeping, sitting on some branches of the tree and holding the next branch tightly, like a standing person sleeping in a running bus! In between it opens its eyes, looks around with minimal movement for its head, like the sleeping traveller sees whether the bus has reached his place, and goes back to sleep J. It was fun watching them, as they look cute, but deadly lazy!
They eat only Eucalypts leaves! Believe me, I just mean it! They won’t eat anything other than that, it is said to get 90% of its hydration from these leaves. It only drinks water when the leaves are dry, or when it get sick! The word Koala came from the aboriginal language which means ‘no drink’! It will be more surprising when you know that these leaves are very low in nutrition and extremely poisonous to most of the animals.
This chap, then says he is very choosy! All he eats is only Eucalypts leaves and that too he eats only a few types of them! Luckily that Australia has some 80 types of Eucalypts J.
They are also like Kangaroos in carrying the young ones in a pouch! I was of the impression that only Kangaroos do this!
But at the end of the day, this guy won’t even move for the fear that movement may trigger the digestion of what they ate and so may have to eat again J ! I think their fat, bluffy body should be a lesson for people who think that fasting is the way to become slim :D.
We met some Kangaroos also. They are mostly fed up with the feeding of the people coming there. They also follow Koala as their stomach is full J !
We finished it all in 1-2 hours, and that too because we spent too much time waiting to see Koala moving J ! A restaurant inside the park had only French fries (rather will say potatoes in the shape of French fries) for vegetarians!
Tailpiece:- School looks full fun here ! They got a hell lot of vacations – 1.5 months for Christmas, 1 month April, 2 weeks in July and 2 weeks in September !
Information :- More information about Koalas can be found at : http://www.thekoala.com/koala/index.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment