The Wizards Of Oz!

Australia is not only a country, but also a continent. The land down under, cut-off from the rest of the world has an abundance of unique species of native animals, birds, reptiles, insects and plants.

- Priya Pathiyan

THE WADDLERS

I saw hundreds of Little Penguins in their natural habitat at Phillip Island, just two hours away by car from the city of Melbourne. Through the day, they dive deep into the ocean to feed on fish. At sunset, you can see them waddling back to land, where they scurry into small but neat burrows! They look like children, coming home from school in navy blue and white uniforms. There is a viewing platform for tourists to watch them without causing any disturbance. My excellent guide, Ricardo Alves- Ferreira, explained how despite there being so many penguins and burrows, the birds never get lost. They know exactly how to reach their homes, without a GPS or even an address!

THE HOPPERS

Say Australia, and you automatically think of kangaroos, right? Kangaroos belong to the mammalian group known as ‘marsupials’. A marsupial mother has a pouch near her belly, in which she carries and feeds milk to her baby. The baby funnily enough is called a ‘joey’. Australia has more than 140 species of marsupials including koalas, wallabies, wombats, possums, platypus, wallaroos, potoroos, bandicoots, quolls and Tasmanian devils.

I went for a stroll in the Little River Reserve of the You Yangs with Janine Duffy, a wonderful lady who runs Echidna Walkabout Tours and heads the Koala Clancy Foundation.

Hiding quietly in the bush*, we kept our eyes peeled for kangaroos. Following Janine, I even duck-walked quite a distance so that we could see them from under the branches. We didn’t want to scare them away.

THE CLIMBERS