Australia, Day Two: Koalas and Wallabies and Kookaburras, OH MY!

Today was day REAL one.  The day I actually had to work.  But let's still put "work" in quotes because, seriously guys, this job is just so cool.

We started off at WILD LIFE Sydney, a zoo of sorts located right on the harbor that, from what I can tell, houses a lot of animals that wouldn't necessarily survive in the wild--you know, kookaburras that had been in car accidents, one-eyed koalas, that kinda thing.  Pretty cool, if you ask me.  They were Awesome enough to let us film inside the koala exhibit, close to the koalas.  

But any dreams I had of actually holding (or touching) a koala were quickly shattered.  Why?  Well, koalas are somewhat delicate animals that require a whopping 20 hours of sleep a day on average.  When tourists come in and hold or touch them a lot, waking them up from their slumber, it can stress them out so much they start to lose hair, the ability to breed, or even die.  

Dude, I get it.  I get messed up when I don't get sleep too.

I'd never want to knowingly play a part in animal destruction, so I got close enough for a couple of selfies and a few quick video bits with koala fun facts, and then we let them slumber on in peace.  That's not to say, though, that the koalas weren't all-stars.  Considering we were there right at nap time, the koalas we were working with (I believe their names were Jay and Bill) did a fantastic job hamming it up for the camera.  They awoke, ate, climbed, yawned, groomed, and gave me quite a few annoyed blank stares (koala stink eye, if you will).  

But let's just take a second to discuss HOW AWESOMELY COOL THESE ANIMALS ARE.  And cute.  So cute.  (I think Bill would prefer ruggedly handsome, but I don't care, the dude was cute.)  They sleep 20 hours a day, poop 100 times a day (yeah, think about it), eat only leaves, and carry their young ones in a pouch.  And they have two thumbs on each hand!  I kiiiinda want a koala's life.

(I was corrected, however, that koalas are not really like sloths, even though it may seem like that at first glance.  I guess they move pretty fast and can even jump from limb to limb.)

The koality time (ha! Thank you to friend Skye for that fantastic pun--wish I woulda thought of that on camera...) ended with a torrential downpour into the enclosure, but we still got everything we needed.  The poor koalas, however, got drenched.  Curling up in a Eucalyptus tree isn't the best way to stay dry in the rain, I suppose.

Our next segment led us to an Aboriginal heritage tour of Sydney--but unfortunately the downpour was such that it made any kind of outdoor filming impossible.  So, we sat down and interviewed a young Aboriginal woman named Gabby, and then she agreed to walk with us the next day instead (the people here are just so nice).  The interview was still interesting, though, because I know pretty much nothing about Aboriginal culture.  

One of my favorite parts was that each Aboriginal tribe has a unique connection to a specific plant or animal (called a totem), and they protect that living thing.  It steams from the belief that no living thing is superior to any other living thing (beautiful), and they won't eat or kill whatever their totem is.  In this way, animals and plants are conserved throughout the country, too, because if each living thing has someone else looking out for it, then ideally over-farming or over-hunting won't happen.  I love it.  

Each person is also given a totem at birth, and it is their personal job to protect that living thing throughout life.  Gabby said, however, that this tradition is in the midst of a rekindling.  Since the Aboriginal culture has been historically squashed under colonialism, many traditions didn't get passed on from generation to generation as they were before.  If you see the movie Rabbit Proof Fence, you'll kind of get the idea.  A lot of kids were taken away from their culture early on, in an attempt to assimilate Aboriginal people into colonial culture.  Sad, and unfortunately not unique to Australia.

You can imagine all of this was hard (and still is hard) for Aboriginal people to understand because, again, they believe that no living thing was superior to any other living thing.  

Think about it.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the walking tour.  Should be pretty cool.  Stay tuned...

We ended the day with some fantastic chocolates (yes, please!), and I found myself a bottle of Yellow Tail wine (you guys, it's FROM here, and still the same price. WHY.).  

Again, this is "work", I promise...