Warrandyte

After flying back to Melbourne, the next day, we ventured out to Warrandyte which is a small town where my sister used to live before she moved into the city.  

There wasn't a ton to do, so we spent some time at the park, by the river and enjoying fish and chips.  That is until we ventured out into the wild to see.....

KANGAROOS!

Not far from the town, there was a nature preserve where the kangas just hang out in the wild.  I have no idea  why I agreed to walk through that brush to get some good pics (hello! that has to be full of SNAKES!), but I did it for the sake of the experience. It was pretty surreal being THAT close to wild kangaroos. And funny to see them hop away when we got too close.

Finally, we ended the day with searching for koalas. Kangaroos are a lot more common to run into in the wild, but koalas are pretty hard (a lot of Australians haven't ever seen one in the wild). They sleep practically all day high up in the trees, so they are really hard to spot. Just as we were finishing up our walk and thinking we were unsuccessful, my brother in law spotted one:

To give an idea of how hard they are to spot, here's a video of it. This video was also already on zoom.

Such a fun day feeling like a true Aussie instead of a tourist.