We headed out towards Gorge Wildlife Park to do what seems only right in Australia: to hug a Koala.

Factoid 1: Koalas are not bears. Calling them as such is an insult. Factoid 2: They are indescribably cute and if the park hadn’t offered Koala hugs in a controlled manner, I’ve no doubt that most people would jump the wire fence to have a go anyway. We gather that one Koala does all the hugging per session, leaving the others to sleep in their trees and complain about the loud children. It seems that our Koala was quite content to hug all manner of annoying kids (and us, of course), just so long as the park ranger kept feeding her her favourite eucalyptus leaves. “Gimme the leaves! Gimme the leaves! Those sweet, sweet leaves! Gimme, gimme!”

After the hugging was done we legged-it back towards the main road to watch the Tour Down Under–complete with one of my heroes, Lance Armstrong–fly past before returning to the park to feed peanuts to Kangaroos and Wallabes. Thus far, I have seen over a hundred kangaroos — but unfortunately, they were all dead on the side of the road. It was a pleasure to interact with some live ones for a change. Beautiful as they are, it’s no wonder there are so many dead ones in Western Australia. If you threw a peanut for them it’d have to land within an inch of their nose otherwise they just wouldn’t see it. They’re as blind as bats. Except bats aren’t blind either. (Oh yeah, we saw those too).

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