Kangaroos

South Africa has its big four – elephant, lion, cape buffalo and rhinoceros. Austalia’s big four includes the kangaroo, emu, koala and platypus. If you can see these animals in the wild more the better. We were lucky. By traveling to Australia in Winter we spotted kangaroos almost everywhere and any time of the day. In Summer kangaroos come out at dawn or dusk or as evidenced by the carnage on the roads (what a smell!) at night as well. We were advised by locals to just run into them with our car as swerving could result in greater injury to car and person. As we had a rental car and they don’t take kindly to kangaroo-induced dents we restricted our driving to daytime. The best area for kangaroo spotting we visited was the corridor from Lithgow to Mudgee and the area surrounding Mudgee. We also saw rock wallabies on our walk to “The Rock” near Wagga Wagga. Does anyone know the difference between a kangaroo and a wallaby? We also saw many kangaroos at zoos where we could pet and feed them. For those of you unfamiliar with Australian fauna, kangaroos are marsupials (animals with a pouch) in which they carry their live young for many months. Kangaroos come in all sizes, from the one foot tall Pademelon to the six feet tall Red Kangaroo. Therefore the answer to the Kangaroo / Wallaby question is not that they are different sizes. So what is the answer?