aussie animals in the wild

Posted on January 13, 2008 Updated on July 10, 2013

Living in Sydney, it is not often (if ever) that you get to spot native Aussie animals in their habitats.

From Stanley, we booked a twilight tour to view platypus in the wild. And that we saw! We spotted two of them swimming in the wild, playful, coming up for air and then diving down again. They are nocturnal and apparently very shy so it is after the sun sets, they come out to play.

On the drive to Dismal Swamp, we did sadly see lots of animals that had been hit by cars including a Tasmania Devil. But the cutest thing we have seen was an echidna crossing the road. With his little legs, he was bumbling across the two lanes of traffic and crossed right in front of our car.

But it was in Cradle Mountain, on the night spotlight tour, that we saw much more. We saw wombats (14 to be exact) and can those wombats move. We saw brushtail possums, Bennet and Rufus wallabies. We saw baby possums and a baby wallaby bouncing into his mother’s pouch. It almost felt like what we were seeing was a performance. Right outside our room at Cradle Mountain Lodge, the wildlife can be seen. In the evenings, we saw wallabies bouncing through. This was nothing like we expected.

Walking with fairy penguins was also another treat. In Bicheno, we did the night tour to view the fairy penguins… And it is incredible to watch these flightless birds swim to shore after a long day at sea and waddle their way back to their homes, usually to their waiting babies. What blew us away was how close we could get. The penguins literally walk around us to get around. Awesome experience.

Never had we imagined that we would be able to witness these animals in the wild. People from overseas always tell us they would love to come to Australia and see our animals in the wild. And this is obviously the place to go – Tasmania is a wildlife wonderland!