As well as having a certain undeserved reputation for being home to a wide variety of deadly creatures (like crocodiles, sharks, snakes, spiders and jellyfish), Australia is probably more famous for its large collection of animals found nowhere else on Earth including the majority of the world’s marsupial species. I have read some fascinating articles about Australian wildlife and in particular their marsupials and I was quite surprised to find out that they are not confined to Australia and its nearby islands but that there are also marsupial opossums in South America and even some in North America. What surprised me the most, however, was that marsupials actually originated in South America - presumably when it (and Australia) were both still part of the supercontinent of Gondwana.

Look very carefully at this bundle of fur and you should be able to make out two sleeping heads.

Koalas
These must be one of the cuddliest looking animals in the whole world - its easy to see why they are often mistakenly called bears as they probably look more like teddies than real bears do. What’s harder to understand is how they were nearly hunted to extinction for their fur.

Despite the many roadside warning signs we didn’t see any wild Koalas during our tour but we did see them in their natural habitat in the Koala Conservation Centre on Phillip Island where most of their Koalas are where they belong: high up in the eucalyptus trees. They were, however, very hard to spot - even when we were guided by a large arrow stuck in the ground pointing at the inevitably sleeping marsupial.

To satisfy their visitors’ lust for a closer look at these adorable creatures, there was a raised boardwalk leading around the tops of some shorter eucalyptus trees where you could walk at the same level as the sleeping koalas. The Australian winter was just finishing so it was still a little cold for the koalas and they were all huddled up into furry grey balls to conserve their heat. This made it very hard to work out which way they were facing but we did eventually spot that two of them had an extra little head of a young cub peeping out from its mother’s protective embrace.

There’s something irresistible about koalas that makes you want to hug them, so when we read that Featherdale Wildlife Park near Sydney actually lets you cuddle these cute creatures we could “bearly” wait to get there. Unfortunately their leaflet advertising this was out of date as their “cuddle-a-koala” star attraction had been outlawed following a state ban on the practice. Apparently koalas are very sensitive animals and can suffer from loss of appetite or even premature death due to the stress of being handled by over-excited tourists unable to resist the overpowering animal magnetism that radiates from these adorable creatures. We were, however, still allowed to gently stroke the back of one of them under the watchful eye of its handler - and they aren’t as soft as they look! Kangaroos have much softer coats.

Despite this disappointment, we still had an unforgettable time in the koala enclosure. There were about 6 koalas perched on branches with plenty of young eucalyptus leaves within easy reach. This easy access to the juiciest young leaves made them a lot more active than their wild counterparts - they were all wide-awake and occasionally even moving. There were low fences around most of their perches to allow them some sanctuary from the public but otherwise they had the run of the place and we had an excellent, unobscured and quite close-up view of them all.

© Visitor centre(?) The Penguin Parade on Phillip Island This is a very popular tourist attraction near Melbourne. Each night, just after dusk, hundreds of Little Penguins, the world’s smallest breed of penguin, spontaneously come ashore and waddle up the beach to their burrows, completely unperturbed by the hundreds (or sometimes thousands) of spectators that line their path. Photography is very difficult as flashes are strictly prohibited so this photo is from the visitor centre.

Birds
Neither of us are really bird watchers but we couldn’t ignore the many exotic birds that were so commonplace throughout Australia. We saw cockatoos, budgerigars, pink and grey galahs (which look a bit like pigeons with pink heads), plenty of parrots sometimes in trees but more often they were dicing with death stood on the side of the road and, early one morning, we were lucky enough to see some emus. We also saw these little penguins…

Chris wearing a fly net

Flies
Within minutes of getting off the plane at Alice Springs we understood why Australians would want to hang corks from their hats - the flies were a major irritation in The Outback. They resemble small house flies and within minutes of going outside they are swarming about you. They are particularly attracted to your eyes, nose, ears and mouth and are therefore extremely irritating. The only consolation was that they didn’t seem to bite at all - they would just sit on you if you let them. You could actually buy hats with corks hanging from them but they were intended more as souvenirs than as a serious deterrent to these flies (and, not surprisingly, we didn’t see anyone brave enough to wear one). The modern method of dealing with the flies is to wear a net over your hat (which makes you look a bit like a bee keeper). Luckily these nets were sold at the airport and they were excellent at keeping the flies off our faces.

A bottle nosed dolphin taking a look up at us. Unfortunately they were really hard to capture on film and so this video still is our best shot of an unforgettable experience.

Dolphins
It has been a long standing ambition of ours to be able to swim with wild dolphins and we really hoped that we would be able to achieve this sometime during our tour of Australia. Our guide book described a number of places where people can encounter dolphins and the most appealing one was near Melbourne where some boat operators take tourists to Port Phillip Bay to swim with wild dolphins and seals. We tried to book this on the day that we arrived in Australia but unfortunately it was still too cold (for the people - not the dolphins) and so the trips weren’t running.

We're not sure if dolphins ever visit the dive sites around The Great Barrier Reef but we weren’t lucky enough to see any during our dives. They must hang out in this area though, as a couple were spotted swimming near our boat when we were on the move.

Our final opportunity for a close encounter with dolphins was when we reached the West Coast of Australia. We had read about the exceptionally friendly wild dolphins that visit the beach almost every morning at Monkey Mia and quite happily swim right up to the waiting tourists stood knee deep in the water. This is a very popular tourist attraction. However, the round trip from Perth would have taken up 3 of our valuable days. So instead we decided to try out a similar location about 2 hours south of Perth (Bunbury) where dolphins also (but less predictably) swim right up to the beach to take a look at the waiting tourists. This is a much less publicised location and so we hoped that it would be a more intimate encounter than Monkey Mia with less people going over the top with excitement if/when the dolphins turned up.

We spent the night in Bunbury so that we could visit the beach first thing in the morning - which is when the dolphins usually show up. We sat watching for them on the beach for almost 3 hours but, unfortunately, we weren’t in luck and we only saw some swimming way out in the bay. However, we had taken the precaution of booking a Dolphin Encounter boat trip and, although we couldn’t swim with them, we spent an exhilarating hour watching (and being watched by) dolphins in a nearby estuary. We were taken to where the dolphins feed and we saw quite a few including some with young calves. A couple of the dolphins were curious and swam right up to the side of the boat to take a look up at us. The finale was when we returned to the mouth of the estuary and watched some dolphins playing in the surf. We saw them leap right out of the water and also riding the waves as they were breaking. Unfortunately they were really hard to capture on film.

And as for the dangerous creatures:
Well, we didn’t see any spiders (despite regularly checking underneath toilet seats); the jellyfish were out of season (which is Oct - May); and we didn’t really get into crocodile territory (that’s reserved for our next trip to Oz when we will go to Kakadu National Park where Crocodile Dundee was filmed). However, we did see some sharks while we were diving (but they were relatively harmless reef sharks) and we did see a very large and quite poisonous snake while walking in the West MacDonnell Range near Alice Springs. Unfortunately, it was very camera shy and disappeared before I could get a shot of it.

People
Australians have a bit of a reputation for being racist, sexist and brash (particularly in The Outback) but, throughout our stay, we saw absolutely no evidence of this at all. The people that we met were always very friendly and helpful everywhere we went and we always felt safe, even walking along deserted city streets at night. Sadly, we hardly saw any Aboriginal people until we reached Cairns but we can confirm that, contrary to the original definition of “Antipodes” (from around 150AD), they are not “a race of people whose feet face backwards”.