Ian Down Under

With only a couple of days left to go, all the faffing around and zooming and panning I've had to do thus far to get good photos of indigenous wildlife seemed a bit redundant today.

By leaving Sydney at 7.20am (which was a wrench...), you can arrive at Featherdale Wildlife Park before it opens, before the crowds spook the animals. They have the lot: Tasmanian Devils, all sorts of wombats, birds of many coloured plumage, snakes, crocdiles (see the Flickr photo album for the lot...)

But what you want are your totally bona fide Australian icons up close and personal...

Koala (not bear) whose fur you expect to be wiry, but is, in fact, really cuddly-toy-soft...



Kangaroo/wallaby - not sure I can still tell the difference...



Emu... (minus Rod Hull and a bit too close up...)



And dingoes...



...which look cute as puppies but which carry your children off as adults...

Also on display was this rather oversized joey, which seemed a bit reluctant to leave its mother...



A bit like those five year olds you still see ferried around in pushchairs. Probably eating sweets.