KI: Koala Walk

And now, finally, we have come to the most exciting part of our trip: the koala walk!  Surprisingly, not because of the koalas, but more about the surprise later.

All of the travel guides said that it is rare to see a koala in Australia in the wild, but if you are going to see one then Kangaroo Island is the place to do it.  Awhile back when koalas were running out of natural habitat on the main continent, someone decided to relocate some to Kangaroo Island where there was still lots of eucalyptus for them to eat.  As you might know, koalas can only digest a limited number of eucalyptus species so it seemed like a good idea.  This move was so successful that KI became overrun with koalas and they started to decimate the tree population, so fertility control was used to try and regulate the population. 

Despite that, we didn't see a koala anywhere for the first day and a half of our trip so we decided to go on the "koala walk".  It was basically on someone's farm, but they had a beautiful pathway lined with blue gum trees and they "guaranteed" koala sightings.  It wasn't technically the wild I guess, but they were certainly not captive.  It was more just a convenient place to see them I suppose.  First we ate our lovely picnic lunch under the gum trees, just getting the lay of the land.  Then the koala spotting contest began!  I must say, Ryan is good at bird spotting, but I kicked butt at koala spotting!  Of the 10 koalas we saw, I found 9 of them and Ryan found 1 (which might have actually been a duplicate sighting, but I gave it to him anyways!)  I have to give him credit though, because all of the beautiful pictures in this post are his.

Now finally I can reveal the amazing surprise!  As we were leaving the farm we walked by a mama kangaroo and her young joey.  We thought they were pretty cute so we got up close and started taking pictures of them, but then we noticed the mama actually had another baby in her pouch!!!!!  I must say, I never expected to see that in my whole life so I feel really lucky.  The baby didn't peek it's head out too much, but when it was inside we could still see the mom's belly moving around - so weird!  She was being very protective and they ended up hopping off shortly after, but it was quite a special thing to see.  For that reason, this was certainly the highlight of the trip.  Enjoy the pictures!

You can sort of see his tail sticking out too.