Everyone knows Kangaroo is a national symbol of Australia. Kangaroos in Australia are like strayed dogs in Malaysia. They can be spotted easily by the highway or forest. Kangaroo signboards are as common as Speed Limit signboard in Malaysia.

Beware of Kangaroo! You might be hit out of the blue!

Do you know when you don’t understand someone, instead of saying ‘I beg your pardon’, you can actually say ‘Kangaroo’?

No joke, you can try it when you have a chance! But probably only Guugu Yimithirr, Australian Aboriginal tribe of Far North Queensland, would understand it.

A common myth about the kangaroo’s English name is that ‘kangaroo’ was a Guugu Yimidhirr phrase for “I don’t understand you.” The story starts from once upon a time, Lieutenant Cook (apparently was a British) was exploring Australia and stumbled upon kangaroo. He had never seen kangaroo before so he was curious to ask a nearby local what the animal was called. Being a British, Cook of course spoke in English and amazingly he actually expected the local to understand his language. As expected based on common sense, the local didn’t understand and threw Cook a word “Kangaroo”, meaning “I don’t understand you”. Incredibly Cook really believed that the local understood English and he took it as the name of the animal, thus, Kangaroo. Poor kangaroo… which has been called “I don’t understand you” for centuries.

I didn’t make up the story, ok? The Kangaroo myth was debunked in the 1970s by linguist John B. Haviland in his research with the Guugu Yimidhirr people.

Enough of kangaroo’s myth. Now let me bring you guys to visit the real kangaroos in Featherdale Wildlife Park!

Featherdale Wildlife Park is one of the largest wildlife parks in the metropolitan area of Sydney

Here you can see Australia’s unique wildlife in homely bush setting

Swamp Wallaby! I almost mistaken it as Kangaroo…

First animal that we spotted, kangaroo look-alike creature with black ears and black tail, Wallaby. Wallaby is a smaller version of Kangaroo. They are found on the eastern coast of Australia from southeastern South Australia, Victoria, eastern Queensland and eastern New South Wales.

Swamp wallabies in Featherdale Wildlife Park seem to be trained to entertain the visitors. At first 3 wallabies were enjoying their food whereas the rest were resting inside the pen.

Then when we approached to take the photos of them, the rest of the wallabies inside the pen came out to join the crowd.

All of a sudden, they all lined up, posed and paused, simultaneously in a synchronized movement. I quickly snapped photos of them since they posed for me. After several seconds of posing without moving, they then hopped in a synchronized movement again to the middle of the field and paused and posed.

See, they are now in the center of the pen, a better position for us to photograph! They must have been trained to be celebrities or some big stars! So adorable! They really posed without moving at all as if they knew the professionalism of being a model.

Sleeping wombat

Next, wombat, is also very common mammal in Australia. It looks like a giant sized rat. It’s approximately 1 metre  in length with a very short tail. Oops, rat has long tail!

This wombat just won’t move. I got bored and walked off.

Kangaroos were freed to roam around the park.

Kangaroos here are pretty spoiled. They were freed to play with the visitors. But I think they are more interested of the food on my hand. With AD1, you can get a cone of food to feed them. The food was a mixture of dried grasses and leaves and some vegetarian stuffs. It was kept in a big tank with a box next to it where you throw money in it to ‘buy’ the cone food. Nobody there to actually sell you the food. It was self service. In other word, nobody would know whether you pay or not. Hmm… Australia must be made up of saints.

See… how aggressive the kangaroo was! Staring at my cone!

We are happy family! Look at the shadow, told you the sun there was damn bright! Ruined all my photos.

Australian Brush-Turkey

This turkey is enough to be served in Christmas dinner for few years. The turkey is 70cm tall and it’s commonly found in Australia.

Koala! Koala reminds me of my favourite koala stuffed toy when I was a kid

This was my first time seeing the real koala. It looked exactly the same as my stuffed toy koala! So round and plump and looked like it never get enough sleep!

Whatzup? I want to sleep!

Don’t they look like silkworm cocoon?

Out of so many koalas in the park, I managed to snap only this koala that was not sleeping. The rest were all clinging to the tree sleeping very soundly.

Except for this koala that was on duty as a model.

There is a myth that koalas sleep a lot because they ‘get drunk’ on gumleaves. Fortunately, this is not correct! Most of their time is spent sleeping because it requires a lot of energy to digest their toxic, fibrous, low-nutrition diet and sleeping is the best way to conserve energy.

Oops… I forgot what bird it is.

I don’t remember the bird’s name. But apparently this bird doesn’t fly. I haven’t seen any of them fly. They were not caged at all and they just didn’t fly and didn’t run and didn’t try to escape.

They seemed to enjoy sunbathing. Look, They just won’t fly! Or are they duck?

hmmmmmmmmmm……………. is it wombat?

Passport chop for our Featherdale passport

We were given a passport to enter Featherdale park. For each area that we visited, we had to stamp your passport with different type of animal chops. Or else we were not allowed to leave the park. No lah… kidding. Talk about Malaysian’s slang of ‘lah’, apparently many foreigners are excited about the slang. The few colleagues from Belgium and Netherlands have already picked up our slang so fast. They basically just add the word ‘lah’ for most of their sentences. They use it more than we do! Especially when they try to emphasize something like ‘Yes lah!’, ‘No lah!’… see… who says Malaysian’s English is rojak?

Ok, I digress. Back to the passport chop. It’s just something fun for you to stamp as a memory.

My mum was getting her passport chop

My aunt was getting her passport chop

Apparently everyone was very cooperative, they were lining up to get it chopped! I was too busy taking photos and didn’t even bother about the passport.

Read if you want to know more.

More kangaroos… might be wallaroo, don’t really know how to distinguish them

This is extraordinary, it’s WHITE wallaroo! But no, being Albino’s isn’t a good thing…

White Wallaroo are Albino’s. Albino’s do not have the pigment Melanin that is responsible for the colour of fur, eyes and skin, including freckles. Albinism can only be passed on to the offspring if both parents are ‘carriers’ of the albino gene. Without the protection of Melanin, Albino animals are at risk of damage to their skin and eyes from the sun. Survival of Albino animals in the wild is usually low because they do not have the natural colour that provides camouflage from their predators.

I’m glad that these wallaroos are well protected in the park.

Finally… Dingo!!

Dingo looks just like any ordinary dog. What makes them unique is that they don’t bark but only howl and breed only once a year. Hmm… can’t really get them to guard the house then, since they don’t bark.

Random photo…

If you don’t see enough animals in the park, no worries… bring some back to sleep with you.

A big collection for you to choose from!

So smart that they build a station here for those who love taking shortcut to get their passport stamped.

I was glad that I didn’t line up at each station to get my passport stamped. I could stamp it all at the exit of the park! But if you don’t get your chop at all also can lah… it’s not like you will score A in your National Geographic after you collect all the stamps.

Featherdale Wildlife Park wasn’t really that huge that will allow you to spend your entire day there. It took us only 1 hour to visit the whole park. Nonetheless, it was the greatest park that I have ever been as most of the animals there can only be commonly seen in Australia.

Visit Featherdale website at http://www.featherdale.com.au/index.htm

Admission fees:

	Adults: $23.00
	Children (3 – 15 yrs): $12.50
	Children under 3 yrs: Free with a paying adult (Excludes group bookings).
	Family Pass (2 adults and up to 4 children): $68.00
	Additional Children : $8.00
	Students: $18.00
	Pensioners: $18.00
	Seniors Card: $16.00