Kuranda Koala Gardens

We decided to spend a day in the tropical rainforest west of Cairns. Cairns is quite tropical but developed. It isn't too far west of the city when the tropical rainforest starts to become apparent.

Most of the morning was spent at Kuranda Koala Gardens. This is really a small zoo but they allow you to interact with some of the animals. Something that is rarely seen in America. The Gardens is a small family owned operation and although it is small if you spend time and read the information that is with each animal you can easily spend a couple of hours there. So there are lots of photos, but not too much commentary.

Kurana is a small village that hosts a few attractions. The Koala Gardens as well as a bird sanctuary and butterfly gardens. The town is set up quite well for tourism with lots of retail outlets, good food and clean toilets. They also spent some time making the town look quite nice. Along the main street there are boulevard trees and bushes that look like this....

The first attraction you see upon entering are the freshwater crocodiles. Apparently the saltwater ones are even bigger. I dunno.... this one looked plenty big to me.

As you meander along you come across the koala bear enclosures. You can get quite close to the koalas as shown by these photos.

Koalas are slow moving marsupials (not really bears) that move slowly, sleep about 20 hours a day and primarily eat eucalyptus leaves. The Kuranda gardens had photo ops with Koalas which I could not resist. The koalas do not have photos for more than 30 minutes per day and have the 4th day off. Although you would never see this in America and it's not environmentally (or politically) correct I decided I wanted to have my photo with "Milky". Here we are, and it made my day.

After this we went along to the Kangaroo, Wallabie and Pademelon enclosure. We were able to walk about all of these lovely animals and hand feed them if we want. It was so nice to get close to these animals and enjoy being with them. They also have a place of refuge they can escape to if they really do not want to interact with the tourists. Here is a picture of a photo that shows some of the differences between these animals that look so similar.

Now here are just some cool photos of kangaroos, wallabies and pademelons.

I couldn't resist this picture of Steve and a Wallabie. I'm not sure who is studying who more.....

At the Koala Gardens there were some displays of venomous snakes.... some were quite large judging by the size of the snake and the number of coils. I only took a picture of one, a black python. He wasn't too happy with me. I double checked to ensure that he was completely enclosed with no avenue of escape before I hung around too much.

As we finished up we came across some beautiful flowers. Here are a couple of large tropical flowers for your enjoyment.

Tomorrow we are heading out on a dive boat for a snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef.