Wildlife at the Sydney Zoo

Wednesday, June 24

I was supposed to testify about DNA last week.  But my evidence was postponed to Monday of this week, then to Tuesday; certainly I’ll be in the box today?  Not to be. 

Instead, Eitan and I had another fun day in sunny, friendly Sydney.   We spent three hours at the Wildlife Zoo attraction at Darling Harbour.

Koalas expend their energy metabolizing eucalyptus, and so sleep twenty hours a day.  But this one woke up and looked around.  “Here’s looking at you, kid.” 

The echidna is a monotreme

Who likes its weather nonextreme.

Its eyes are pink and spines are white

Consuming ants all day and night.  

Covered with coarse hair and spine

Oft taken for a porcupine.

Seeing one is quite a thrill –

An egg-laying marsupial.

We see lizards with blotched blue tongues

and lazing dragon bearded ones.

Rex is a sixteen-foot alpha crocodile who attacks everything in sight.  His former dog poaching days earned him the enmity of his rural human neighbors.  Before they could kill him, a field station rescued Rex; but the croc chose to eat his dates, instead of mating with them.  Fortunately for him, today Rex is a pampered refugee at the Wildlife Zoo, rather than a line of luxury handbags and shoes.  

Here is a cuddly wombat, sleeping so marsupially. 

Eitan handles lizards and snakes

and we both get to pet a baby quokka.  (The quokka selfie is the cutest social media trend in Australia right now.) 

We saw a cassowary bird roaming around his enclosure.  This ancient man-killer likes to eat a variety of fruits, which he swallows whole.  Here we see Eitan feeding him cherry tomatoes. 

Australian Museum & ANZAC

Tuesday, June 23

We are staying at the Pullman Hotel, centrally located in the southeast corner of Hyde Park.  Nearby are the Australian Museum of natural history, the ANZAC war memorial, and the Prosecutor Office.  We visited all of those places today, as seen (and labeled) in the view from the Sydney Tower.  

The Australian Museum had a special exhibition of the top “50 Wildlife Photographs of the Year.”  Some stunning work, one by an 8 year old winner.  You can look at and buy prints on-line.  

Natural Harmony © Minghui Yuan (China) 2014

Eitan poses here amid the large drum statues.  He fits right in, looking very percussionesque.

The Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) roamed Australia and New Guinea for tens of millions of years.  This proud marsupial went extinct on the mainland a few thousand years ago, after man introduced the dingo. 

Penguins may be very cute

but Eitan prefers creepy, crawly things. 

Eitan checks out some funky bones in the Hall of Skeletons.

Australia recently commemorated the 100^th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli.  The Australia New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) art deco war memorial was built in the 1930’s to honor the soldiers who served in the Great War.  About 10% of the new nation’s population went off to Europe.  In the slaughter that ensued, most were wounded or died.  The disastrous Gallipoli campaign helped forge the national character of the Australian people. 

A slain ANZAC soldier returns as a Spartan would – on his shield – with his arms extended across his sword. 

Sydney Aquarium

Monday, June 22

The Sydney Aquarium in Darling Harbour has a fantastic array of aquatic wildlife.  Here is a platypus, swimming about the tank.

Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fish) predate the bony fish, amphibians and dinosaurs.  These living fossils include rays and sharks.  The aquarium has a wonderful shark-ray tank, where these fish circle around and above visitors, behind thick glass. 

Here is some footage we took of those beautiful rays

and of the shark, a fearsome apex predator.

New to us Americans was the dugong, a Sirenian mammal that swims the South Sea waters. 

We also saw an octopus scuttling across the glass

and a light show of illuminated moon jellyfish. 

After a delectable pizza at La Rosa on the Strand …

Eitan and I ascended the Sydney Tower (by elevator, not stairs), where the view from the top was panoramic.  The Sydney Harbour Bridge is seen behind Eitan.