Sydney, Australia (Taronga Zoo)-November 18

Bill took off to do the Sydney Bridge Climb with his friend Tommy.  Tommy is our traveling companion on our trip.  Bill and he have been friends since childhood.

Caroline and I had booked a behind the scenes tour of the Taronga Zoo in Sydney.  Normally I do not visit zoos but Australia has such unusual animals that I thought it would be fun.  The behind the scenes tour allows us to feed the animals along with the zoo keeper.  Our trip was the nocturnal animals.  All of them exist only in Australia.  The best part was Caroline and I were the only ones on the tour that day!

We took one of the Ferries from Sydney Harbour to the zoo.  It took about 20 minutes.  It was a beautiful day and a great ride. 

Sydney opera House from the ferry.

On the Ferry

The city view from the ferry.

Wendy showing us the contents of the freezer.

Wendy, the zoo keeper has worked there for 20 years.  She really loves the animals.  She is partial to the nocturnal ones because she says they don't get the attention that the other animals do.  They are smaller and don't have the draw that the koalas and kangaroos have.  

This is why Taronga zoo is known as "the zoo with a view."

This peacock wonders around the zoo with no pen.  He jumped up on a deck and spread his feathers then turned in a circle several times for everyone to see him.

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One of the frozen dinners!

More frozen dinners!

Meal worms for dessert.  Apparently, they have little nutritional value but all of the animals love them  (notice the awesome Okinawan manicure?)

Caroline is here with "Eddie."  Eddie is a potaroo.  So cute.  Wendy told us that most Austrailians have never heard of a potaroo.  he hops around like a kangaroo.

Caroline is feeding the like flying squirrel things.  The funny thing was that the visitors to the zoo could see us from their side of the glass.  Sometimes a little kid would say, "look there is a little girl."

Above are "bilbys."  They are rabbit/kangaroo like things.  SO CUTE!  They hop around like little kangaroos.  Wendy told us that they are getting to be endangered.  So Australia has launched the Easter Bilby campaign.  Now you can get a chocolate Easter Bilby.  We really loved the Bilbys.

Caroline had a good time feeding the ring-talied squirrels.  This one got mad when she left him.  He pulled her hair and made her come back with more flowers.

Feeding the wallabys was awesome!  Little did I know that our next tour would be even better.  Here, they let the wallabys run around.  You are not allowed to touch them (we could on the next tour, see later entry) but they can come up to you as close as they like.  Wendy gave us food so we could feed them.  As you can see, I loved feeding the animals.

Caroline feeding the Emu was hilarious.  She held a spring of blossoms and with lightening speed, the emu ripped each individual blossom off the sprig.  You would think that he would get your finger as fast as he was going but he was really accurate.  He pulled her arm with each bite.

Taking the ferry back to the harbour.  It was a beautiful day.

I took a picture of the Sydney bridge.  Bill was climbing this while we were at the zoo.  You can see little dots at the top where people climbed up.

 A great day at the zoo!