Australian Adventure

Episode 5

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...in which our intrepid hero (that's me folks), accompanied by two entire generations of the Kirch family, visit Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo, learn how to frighten an emu, and narrowly avoid stepping on a snake.

My life is complete. If I was to drop down dead right now I'd be happy in the knowledge that I've been to the home of Skippy. For those of you too young or too foreign to have heard of this icon of popular television, back in the 70's Skippy was the Lassie of the marsupial world. If the bridge collapsed and granny was stuck on a rock as dingoes nipped at her ankles, Skippy would bound back to base and convey the entire sorry situation to the vacuous humans with a deft twitch of a shiny nose, and a couple of ear wiggles.

It was high drama.

The TV company set up a studio on the edge of Kuringai-Chase National Park in which to film these masterpieces, and after it finished they bussed in a load of other animals and opened it to the public. Most of them are in the cute'n'attractive category, although a three-foot long iguana that we encountered was not that cuddly. The consensus was that he was probably not an exhibit, since that kind of lizard lives in those parts anyway. And he was on the path, not in an enclosure.

OK, the kangaroos were just the cutest thing I've seen since I got here. I could have stayed in their enclosure for hours. There were twenty or thirty I guess, ranging from about 2 feet to 5 feet tall, and tame enough to eat sugar puffs from your hand. And if you didn't have anyway they'd come up and give you a bit of a snuffle anyway, just to make sure. We counted four who had joey heads poking out from their pouches, and one had both his head and his feet sticking out. I couldn't quite work out how he'd bent himself into position - perhaps there were two in there.

To stop you from staying in there too long the roos shared the enclosure with some bad tempered emus, who would wait to pounce on any sugar puffs you might have spare. Apparently the way to scare of an emu is to look taller than they do, so you make an emu-head shape with your hand and hold it up in the air. Emus are not terribly bright; not only do they fail to realise that it's just a hand, they don't seem to be too aware of the fact that most emus don't wear Reeboks and baseball caps.

While we're on the subject, emus make a noise like someone playing bongos a long way away. The sound carries over a surprisingly large distance.

And yep, I stroked a Koala - holding them is no longer allowed because they have soft ribs or something, and get a bit tetchy. Not that I'm sure how you tell a tetchy Koala from a happy one - they just sit motionless looking cute and smelling smelly. Fur a bit like a mesh of soft moss. They've really perfected balancing on branches too. Either that or someone nailed them to the tree. I'm told that they also get tetchy if you touch their leaves, photograph them with flashes, blow up their nostrils or prod them. Sounds like me...

You'll all be happy to know that I followed Geoff's advice. No-one seemed too concerned that I was wearing a nappy, but they weren't too pleased with me trying to get the Koala into the bio-suit...

When we were all Skippy-ed to the max Eve and I scooted up the coast and set out to find some Aboriginal engravings. They were easy to find, carved into what looked like a giant natural turtle shell made of rock. Pictures of wallabies, people, fish, your usual 3000 year old graffiti. As I was tripping along the path Eve grabbed me all of a sudden (nah - too hot for any of that kind of stuff out in the open) to stop me from stepping on a snake. I'm told that most of them will scurry off before you get too close, but if you surprise them they'll bite.

I shouldn't think many Koalas get bitten by snakes. To be surprised by a Koala you'd have to be pretty unaware. Although they do sometimes fall out of trees if they've found some really juicy leaves. I wonder if they notice...

We're of to meet Grace now. She's a friend of Jillian, and I've only spoken to her on email, and who will recognise me as I'm wearing an orange T-shirt. It would be just my luck to have set up the meeting in an orange T-shirt wearers convention...