I Gotta See A Man About A Wallaby!

I know I'm overusing Finding Nemo references, but I figured I might as well use as many as possible while I can. Anyways... This past week I got to hang out with some wallabies! The IHD people took us to the Territory Wildlife Park where we got to see wallabies, a really adorable baby fruit bat, some crocs, a lot of fish, owls, other birds, just a whole load of animals! It was super exciting.

The Park was so big! It was like, San Diego Zoo kind of big. Because the place was so huge, I thought that there were going to be a lot of animals and I was VERY excited about it. However, when we got there, we quickly realized that this was not the case. There were like five or six small 'encounters' and then nothing in between and they were so spread out. It took like five minutes to walk to each one. The whole thing was almost like a hike through the middle of nowhere, it was all dirt and there was little to no sidewalk at all. I really did like the park, but the fact that everything was so spread out like that was really annoying. I definitely met my step goal at least twice that day!

The first thing we did at the park was get lost! That was kind of surprising because we were all in a huge group in the beginning. There was a fork in the path and we ended up going towards the highway and out of the park instead of heading to the animals. The map was no help at that point, and nobody could figure out how to get back. When we did finally figure that out we went to the Nocturnal House where they had, you guessed it, animals that come out at night! They kept that area super dark for the animals which was really interesting. Unfortunately, the group rushed out of there really quickly to get on the shuttle to go to a pelican feeding show. We all got on the bus and Devyn and I hopped off before it left. We wanted to go see the wallabies and it didn't make much sense to go to the other side of the park and then come all the way back. So, that's what we did!

That was THE coolest experience. If I'm being totally honest, before that day I didn't even know what a wallaby was! At the Woodland Walk, where the wallabies are, you go into this fence much like you would in a walk-through aviary and you get to just walk around with the wallabies. At first, I was really nervous that there weren't going to be any wallabies out and about because for the first while the only wallaby that we were seeing was a wild wallaby outside of the enclosure. As Devyn and I walked along the path, we eventually came to a feeding area with benches and food for the animals. That's where we saw them! We only saw one when we first got there though. We were totally convinced that this one had some kind of issue because it was acting all kinds of weird. It kept laying it's head on the ground and fidgeting! Then as we looked around the area, we found Angie and Carl! Angie and Carl were two kangaroos that I jokingly named because we were chilling and taking pictures with them. Carl was pretty chill, but Angie was mean as heck! Every time Devyn and I tried to pet her she hissed at us! It was so annoying, we just wanted to pet a wallaby. By the time we had taken all of our pictures, wallabies were popping up everywhere! There were like six in the little area we were in and at least that many in the bushes and trees around us. One particular wallaby hopped right up to us and laid down in the dirt. Thankfully, this little guy let us pet him. A little bit later another girl walked up and she scared him! He jumped up so fast and Devyn and I both screamed and ran, it was so funny! By that point, the first wallaby was giving us some weird looks and we were getting pretty hot out there so we ended up just heading back to the Nocturnal House to get some air con and see the animals that we had missed earlier.

Thank goodness we had gone back! There were so many cute animals in there that I had never seen before, including a sugar glider! As we were walking through the Nocturnal House, we came across a large window looking into a kitchen area. In that window, there was a guy holding a little baby fruit bat. When he had looked up and saw us staring in, he opened the window to show us the fruit bat. Apparently, this poor little bat had been abandoned on the ground by her mom and the park saved her. The worker told us that he had become sort of her adopted mom. He fed her for us while we were watching, and it was just the sweetest thing! He treated her as if he was actually her mom and oh my gosh my heart just melted! When he fed her, the fruit bat chewed on the piece of fruit she was given and sucked all the juices out, then just spit it on the ground! The worker told us that this was because if fruit bats were to actually eat the fruit, they would be too heavy to fly. Isn't that crazy!?

She was just the absolute sweetest thing, but we only had a limited time in the park so we had to keep moving! Next, we wanted to head to the aquarium. As we were going to the aquarium, we were passing by the walk-through atrium and decided to check it out. It was a HIKE trying to get to this thing. It seemed like it was so close to the entrance to the Vine forest area of the park and it ended up being nowhere near it. It took us about ten minutes just to find this place and it was definitely not worth it. To get there, we had to walk through a lot of bird enclosures that were a good distance apart and had only about one or two individual birds each. When we finally got to the aviary, there was only one type of bird in there, that we could see anyways, and these things were terrifying! They were huge and when we walked in they were all looking at us and making noises. Devyn and I did not last more than a minute in there before we left. We then had to walk ALL THE WAY back to the beginning which took way too long. The path in this area is not blocked off from the wildlife in there at all. In fact, the whole entire park is not blocked off from the natural wildlife! There were all kinds of noises going on around us and it's a definite possibility that we could have been eaten out there.

When we had finally made it out, thankfully in one piece, we headed straight for the aquarium. There wasn't really anything too special in the aquarium besides a GIANT, emphasis on the giant, croc. However, there was a stonefish which I had never seen before and is apparently one of the most poisonous fish in the world. They also had some lionfish there, but that was pretty much it. Besides the Barramundi, there wasn't much that I couldn't see in an aquarium back home.

When we left the aquarium, there was a dingo habitat right outside so we went over to check it out. There were no animals in there! We went to the sandbar next to see the whip rays too because it was on the way to the water buffalo and there were none of those either! By that time, Devyn and I were feeling really defeated from the fair bit of false advertising the park had done and we were SO hot so we just headed back to the main office where we came in at. That was the longest walk ever. There was virtually nothing between the sandbar and the main office and the walk was a good mile, possibly two, long! We were quite a bit annoyed with the whole experience at the time, but I am actually really glad that we went.

That was just about everything from this trip! All that we did after that was eat some lunch at the cafe and head back to Darwin!