New South Wales​
We had been planning to make the trip for awhile and the school holidays provided an opportunity to jump the gap. Early on, our thought was to spend our 10 days in Australia traveling from Melbourne to Cairns visiting all the major sites in between. However, upon closer examination, we soon learned Australia is huge and this would be the equivalent of traveling from Boston to Miami in a little over the week. Instead of spreading ourselves too thin, we decided to break up the trip between Sydney in New South Wales and Cairns up in Queensland.
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Our first day in Australia was spent sight-seeing some of the iconic sites and beaches of Sydney and the Finding Nemo Movie.
Although we could have spent several days in downtown Sydney, we didn't come to Australia for shopping, fine dining and people watching. We came to pet a Koala and we needed to get outside the city limits to find one.
Featherdale park looked like the perfect place to observe and interact with many of Australia's cute creatures, so on the road we went. Once at Featherdale, we could see there were plenty of kangaroos, wallabies, and pademelons walking aboutand ready to inspect any hand raised outward.
You can also choose to spend your time observing Wombats, Tasmanian devils, cassowaries, and echidnas up close in their enclosures. But it was straight to the Koala photo shoot line for us. When they brought the big boy out, we went paparazzi mode taking a multitude of photos of the poor thing. Once we were all positioned we gave him a quick pet, snapped a photo and our life was complete.
Later in the afternoon, we were able to participate in a zookeeper talk about some of Australia's lesser know mammals. The kids got a chance to hold, feed and get pooped on by a ringtail possum, a sugar glider and a baby wallaby.
We still have four children. However, the fourth child had to step out for a second for being too aggressive with the baby animals. A bit of Tasmanian devil in that one.
Indoor Skydiving? Apparently, it is a thing. Here is a still shot of Lilly in the air. Videos of all three daredevils to follow.
Lilly gives it a go!
Super Jack!
Mom Showing the Kids How It Is Done
One of Australia's best-known beaches. The waves were a bit sloppy this day, but the kids still gave it a good go. It was a pretty good set up, the littles could play in the sand, as the older one got pounded by the waves. Looks like we should have Will out there in another 15 months.
This was one chill wallaby!
