A Walk With the Wallabies

A few weeks ago, Partner-in-Crime and I decided to splurge on an annual pass for admittance to all the National Parks in New South Wales.

Ever the lovers of all things National Park related, and always on the hunt for lovely day hikes, the incredibly reasonable $65 per car "splurge" was an easy one to commit to.

So far, we have used it for two hikes in the beautiful Bobbin Head National Park. The first day was a pretty and rugged bushland walk, including a surprise waterfall and river views.

For our second hike, we ventured a little further into the park and stopped at the Kalkari Discovery Center, which leads onto a short, paved loop walk. It was quite the easy trek - we did it twice in about 20 minutes - and perfect for families with small children. We saw bush turkeys building a large nest out of leaves and quite a lot of lorikeets and rosellas. The cute gentleman at the Discovery Center told us we might see a wallaby (like a kangaroo, just a bit smaller), so when we spied one a ways back in the woods, we thought we'd really lucked out.

Then, we came around a bend, and right up upon not one, but a whole herd (tribe? gaggle? gang?) of wallabies. They were rather disinterested in us, and let us watch them for as long as we cared to.

Now, there are some places in Australia where it is not terribly uncommon to see kangaroos or wallabies hanging out in your yard or in town, but Sydney is a highly developed city where we've done a pretty good job of running the wildlife out with our asphalt, cars, and buildings. So, happening upon these guys in the wild, rather than at a zoo, was an exciting experience for a couple of city slickers. 

All the more reason to support the national parks!