Wild Life and Nature

Spending the day with Tony our tour guide was a delight.  How authentic looking is he???  
A real Bushman.

Our first stop was the Featherdale Wildlife Park, “Home to the Largest Collection of Australian Animals in the World”.  We were able to get up close and personal with koalas and  kangaroos of various sizes and colors.  Not so up close and personal with crocodiles, wombats and Southern Cassowarys whose front claws could kill you and lazy Dingos who napped in formation.  We fell in love with the cutest miniature penguins you ever want to see, just waddling around.    

Of course, knowing us, something has to happen.  While the exotic birds are all caged and behind netting, the basic Aussie birds are free to fly about.  Dom walks in to the park and is immediately greeted with, you guessed it, bird crap all over his hand.  Tony cleans him up. Dom returns; takes out his iPhone and, you guessed it, a bird craps on his phone.  As Dom says, “I’m glad I can be a source of your amusement”.

 

Next stop was the Blue Mountains, named because they look blue when the sun hits them.  Tony pointed out the recent burn areas but in the vastness of the mountains, it was sometimes hard for the naked eye to see them.  Frankly, I was more affected by the fires as I drove through Malibu and our own surrounding neighborhood because the LA fires came so close to suburbia.  The air was clear, actually overcast in many places.  We were able to see all the popular areas, such as Boar’s Head, the Three Sisters and WenworthFalls.

Part of Tony’s job is predicting the weather.  He knew a storm was coming by the look of the sky but he was also getting frantic warning phone calls from the home office.  Before we knew it we were driving right into a hail storm.  He had to pull over as they were the size of peas. We later heard other areas experienced golf ball size hail.

The storm cleared, followed by brilliant sunshine which afforded us great views of the Three Sisters.  As we were approaching that sight though we could see emergency vehicles and news vans.  Two people were struck by lightning right before we arrived 😳.

Apparently the storm followed us as our concierge warned us not to venture out of the hotel for dinner so we very happy to eat on the harbor once again.

Tomorrow we are on to Ayers Rock where it is 105 degrees with scorching sunshine.

Stay tuned for more adventures.  Something new every day.