The Taronga Zoo

Yesterday the weather, being beautiful, gave us too many options.  Bondi Beach was in the lead until Susie did the clock math and realized she might not make it back in time to attend her evening meeting. Another time to Bondi.

And so we pack for the Zoo.  It's an all day zoo so we pack sandwiches, apples, water bottles. But no eucalyptus leaves for the koalas, no leaves and branches for the  mountain gorillas, no carrots for the giraffes.  We arrive at 11to join a long line of prams,  families on holiday, and incipient sunburns.  It takes us half an hour to the ticket booth, giving Travis, Susan's son, and his girlfriend Lin, exactly the right amount of time to join us.
The next five hours are a blur of animals, micro habitats, nests, moats, screens, nose and finger imprinted glass. The zoo is built on prime headland, a large hill that rises just across the harbor  from downtown Sydney, so the view of zoo is regularly interrupted by views of a harbor with sailboats and ferries, opera house, city skyline.  The giraffes are appropriately backdropped by skyscrapers.
I never think of giraffes as cave animals, and it might be a surprise to them, so it takes an adjustment on all our parts to accept the sight of a giraffe swaying gracefully into a cave opening that is exactly giraffe tall and giraffe wide. A shy one, perhaps cave averse, hides from the crowds behind a rock that is just right to hide him or her.  I wait with my camera for what I think would be an interesting shot of a giraffe peeking out, but he is on to me and simply hides, no peeks.

The koalas are dopily cute, but are so worn out from niblling leaves that they are are all slumped in the crotches of trees in afternoon slumber, like teenagers on weekend mornings, arms and legs hanging limp as if they'd been draped there as tree decorations.
Wombats in similar fashion sleep in their burrows 16 hours a day. They are peaceful grazers of grass when awake, but asleep look like mink medicine balls.
The kangaroos don't so much bound around--who could blame them--as lie around, propped on kangaroo elbows like Romans on couches awaiting the bowl of grapes and figs.
Wallabies, the small kangaroos, however, are upright and adorable.  I suspect everyone has a brief fantasy about adding a wallaby to their menagerie at home. How pleasant it would be, how perfectly Austalian to take the wallaby out for walks in the evenings, bouncing gently through the neighborhoods.
Some cages have odd pairings. For instance, the Egyptian Goose shares an enclosure with the Pygmy Hippo. It's  a mystery to me how they figure out compatibilities between species without benefit of the Eharmony questionnaire.  But the hippo is bouyant in his little pool, the goose picks through leaf litter at the water's edge. They look content.

We took a break mid afternoon at the Seal Show, sitting in the blazing sun sucking on red popsicles (here called icypoles). the seals and their handlers gave an expertly timed show of comedy and grace. "Let me introduce Margie, a California Sea Lion.  She has something none the other seals have,"  ( He points to Margie, who has climbed to the top of a diving platform.  She barks enthusiastically with a nasal tone), "an American accent." the seals do triple flips, race like sprinters, leap 12 feet in the air, and finally bark and wave to the crowd.  We are all refreshed by the show.
But by now we are flagging fast.  Susie, sergeant at heart, squares up her squad and marches us to Wild Australia, an aviary or two, Nightime in the Bush, Sea Life, even the Kid Zoo.  At the end of the day, though, we are grateful, and are happier not to have missed the Pelicans, the gorillas or  the echidna amicably hanging out side by side with an unknown lizard the size of a riot stick.
We return home to collapse with a pair of gin and lemons.