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Tuesday, January 8, 2013

The Great Ocean Road - Revisited

The week after Tasmania, we stayed in Kyneton and took day trips around Victoria from there. We took my parents for a drive along the Great Ocean Road, spotting Koalas, Kangaroos, Wallabys, an Echidna and several beautiful birds along the way!

The White Kangaroo Blizzard gets a taste of the great outdoors

Let the Koala spotting begin!



Koalas are very picky eaters. They only munch certain types of Eucalyptus trees, and also make these trees their homes.

They like to eat the young leaves, near the top of the tree, at the ends of the branches.

And of course, they love resting.

Sleepy koala... The Eucalyptus leaves they have evolved to eat do not actually provide as much nutritional value as one would hope, so they have to eat a lot of them and store their energy for when they need it. The leaves may have also a mild anesthetic quality, or something that contributes to koalas' overall lethargic nature.

These two koalas ate up almost all the leaves in this tree, so they will have to move on to a different tree soon.

We spotted an echidna - a monotreme of the same egg-laying mammal family as the platypus. He was very shy, though and ran over to a burrow, where he stuck his head in and left the rest of his spiny body sticking out for defense, ostensibly playing dead.

Trying to get a better look at the echidna


Dad spotted a wallaby and managed to get pretty close to it before it took off.

A lovely Crimson Rosella

...and a male King Parrot

The winding Great Ocean Road


The Venus Grotto from above

Posing in front of the Venus Grotto

London Bridge, which fell down!







1 comment:

Optimistic Existentialist said...

Oh my gosh what amazing photos!! These photos speak to my inner-traveler :)

WOnderful blog you have!