One of my big dreams as a kid was to visit Australia! Heavily influenced by the existence of Animal Planet, I spent endless afternoons watching Steve Irwin´s show with my mom.. my partner in crime when it comes to watching animal stories again in again 😉

Until this day translated to the streaming world, whenever I can spend time with my family it´s a tradition we will watch Animal Planet, National Geographic Wild or anything that shows nature or animals. This only sets the tone to express how much I have been into this my whole life and that I mean it.

The emotional part for me is that I never imagined this dream (same as Africa and for the same reason) would come true one day. Obviously Australia is so massive and has so many beautiful things to visit, but in my head the association was very simple and clear, exotic animals! or more than exotic, animals that can only be found in Australia.

It´s true you can technically see some of these animals in some zoos around the world, but you get my point. One thing is seeing a few kangaroos in Germany (that was my first experience), than seeing many of them in every sanctuary or zoo I visited in Australia. It truly was a dream come true!

This meant for me that I took almost any opportunity I had to visit sanctuaries or zoos, which needless to say in this country they are huge and very well designed to really protect their animals. I haven´t been everywhere (I wished…) but I dare to say this may the be country that takes its wildlife more seriously, hence it´s a true heaven to visit and contribute to their conservation.

Healesville sanctuary

The first place I visited in Australia was Healesville Sanctuary located in Healesville, Victoria, which is approximately one hour drive from Melbourne. I had the amazing company of my Aussie friend Desiree who kindly hosted me for a few days in her home… as the name implies it´s a sanctuary and it is specialized in native Australian animals, making it a perfect place to start my animal experience in Australia.

In one of the first sections, you can see and interact with small birds like parrots, cockatoos and others. I mean small in comparison to the huge birds you will seel ater 😉 ALL animals are endemic to Australia and that´s what made this sanctuary so special to me. These Red-tailed Black Cockatoos were beautiful!

Echidna encounter

Echidas are very special since they are, together with the platypus, the only animals that are egg-laying mammals. They also have hair and produce milk (but has no nipples!) so for those reasons it is considered a mammal bure surely a very unique one. They are often called “spiny anteater” but they are not related to them, nor to corcupines or hedgehogs at all.

They don´t have teeth but hard pads on the roof of the mouth and the back of the tongue to grind their food. Echidnas are shy and solitary, hence difficult to spot in the wild even though they are widely spread in all Australia. One last fun fact is a baby echidna is called “puggle” and it goes to the mother´s pouch as soon as it hatches!

I had the opportunity to interact with a a couple of echidnas and feed them. I remember I was soooo afraid to touch them, thinking I would feel the spines but they were surprisingly soft 😉 This was early on my trip but one of the most unique and amazing moments I lived in Australia. This very Aussie species is actually very very cute and active!! (sorry koalas, you are cute but boring!) and I doubt I will ever see one again this close so it´s rather special to me! And once again thank you Desiree for sharing this with me!

I have a couple of short videos to show you how cute these little guys are in action!!

Feeding a wallaby

Some hours later I had the opportunity to feed a wallaby! This is the small cousin of the more famous kangaroo species. They are both marsupials but the most obvious difference with a kangaroo is the size. Wallabies do not weight more than 20 kilos and rarely reach the height of 1 meter. They have more compact legs to make them agile in their forest habitat and their fur can have more color combinations compared to kangaroos. The picture below demonstrates the color variation in the fur.

During the next days I would be repeating this experience and in general interacting closely with wallabies in other zoos, but certainly the echidna encounter was unique! and here the wallaby experience was less crowded and definitely more “private”. This wallaby was a slow eater so it gave me enough time to be around! CUTE is the best word to comes my mind to describe them. A petit version of kangaroos that is also much safer to interact with 🙂

How to experience this?

As you can imagine you can´t just get in line and just feed them 😉 You need to buy a separate ticket from the regular entrance. The cost varies depending on the encounter, they are scheduled normally 2 to 4 times per day depending on the animal and the visit per person is usually limited by 10-15 minutes, so it is really short but totally worth it. The additional price starts from 33 Australian dollars to 55 for the echidnas, so it´s not very cheap but you can feel confident this place is working very hard for animal conservation and against extinction. You can find all you need to know in their website Healesville Sanctuary (zoo.org.au)

A fun fact here is that before it was possible to have the same experience with wombats!! Sadly for me, by the time I visited this was no longer possible, but it was explained to us it was meant to protect the wombats. That would have been awesome too but frankly speaking the echidna experience was great!

The other WOW factor was seeing some gigantic birds of the first time, here you can see them from so close distance in a totally natural environment that you really get the understand the dimension and how big they are!

Photo gallery

I saw many more aussie animals for the first time here like our beloved koalas, wombats, dingos, tree kangaroos, tasmanian devil, Kookaburra, crimson rosella, royan spoonbill, white-faced heron, black-necked stork etc. etc.. Below some pics from this amazing day.

And of course more photos from birds! I was particularly impressed by them!

My introduction to Australian sanctuaries and zoos was a total success! I would love to do it again!

Nat