Epic Round The World Trip Adventures! Stunning Photos & Articles - A fascinating gap year travel journal covering every stop of their journey.

Perth Parks - West Australia
Gap Year Travel Journal

(11th March) Perth - Cohunu Park
Jo's mission since arriving in Australia had been to hold a koala and the search continued today! We headed out to the east of Perth to the Darling Range of hills where we had heard they had a large group of wild koalas. It was a bit run down as a wildlife park and had obviously seen better days with fading dinosaur statues and a disused railway track but the wildlife part of the visit was amazing. We bought a bag of puffed wheat and set off to feed every animal we came across. Most of the animals are roaming free around the park: emus, alpaca (with Elvis hair-do's), donkeys, deer, ponies, peacocks, black swans, ducks, dingos, eagles, turkeys and kangaroos. Jo was very brave and managed to hand feed a swan! Feels a bit like a vacuum cleaner sucking up your hand. After that her bravery knew no bounds and we fed just about anything that crossed our paths - except the emus! Mike was loving the whole feeding experience too, like a big kid! There were about 50 kangaroos in the enclosure and we even fed one with a joey in her pouch. However, the main highlight of ther day was definitely the koalas. There are about 20 wild koalas who live in the forest out the back of the park but who chose to come into the park to use it as their feeding ground. They are so tame and used to being handled by humans. They even waddle up to the keepers and lift their arms up like a toddler wanting to be lifted up! And as you can see from the photos above we did actually get to hold one - how excited was Jo?! The huge bib is to protect our clothing from little koala accidents. Their fat bottom sits in your hand and they cling on to you with their two front paws. The one we held was a young female called Ginger 14 months old. She was apparently very ginger when born but this has faded a lot. She weighs about 2kg. Once settled on you the koala is fed eucalyptus leaves and she just sits there and chomps her way through everything given to her. Their fur is so thick it is like a dense fleece fabric and yes they are as cute as anything with little black noses!