Sydney, Australia Part 4- The Taronga Zoo

Reminder: the new, encrypted address for our little blog is :https://pnbindoadventures.blogspot.com . 
You will be redirected if you've bookmarked the original site (missing the s on https://..._)

The Taronga Zoo
The zoo is on a steep hillside and it makes sense to start at the top and work your way down if you can. You can climb up, take the bus, or ride a cable car. We bought a ferry/cable combo ticket to take us from Darling Harbor to the dock at the zoo (with a stop or 2 along the way to pick up additional passengers). The ticket includes the ferry return to Darling Harbor. Here's the Captain Cook express ferry to the zoo!

I suppose the ferry arrivals are timed to give all passengers time to ride the cable cars up the hill but the line is long if you are the last to make it up to the cable car boarding area. Once at the top the cars pass over a section of the zoo for aerial views. Note: You can arrive on the other side of the zoo via a long road trip and there is a large parking area. This was more fun! And we got another chance to see the harbor.

Stairs to the cable car.

Our car mates (they were from Columbia).

Traveling across the top of the zoo.

In 2016, the zoo celebrated 100 years of operation. There are 4000 animals including over 350 species. One of the species is the platypus.

Did we see one? Nope. The exhibit allows the animals access to off-exhibit space. Naturally, they were in the off-exhibit space at the time we were there. There was this great poster!

I am used to seeing geese and pigeons and house sparrows and starlings and even sea gulls at zoos but this was a new one! Australian white ibis in the elephant exhibit area. Australian white ibis outside the food court and even INSIDE the food court. Staffers tried to shoo the birds out when they got on the tables!

Apparently, in the early 1970s a group of captive ibis was released on the Taronga Zoo grounds and they found it was a nice place to live.

There were several nice aviaries. A few birds: First are the king parrots, second are topkot pigeons, third is a red jungle fowl.

There is a large African savannah hoof stock area. We saw some widely known  fauna like kangaroo, wallaby, emu, and the Tasmanian devil, but we also saw less known Aussie region critters like the bilby, quoll, quokka, long-nosed potoroo, and black-footed tree-rat.

Tasmanian devil. Neat exhibit!

The bilby: This is the Prince George Bilby exhibit. It's a fairly new exhibit to commemorate the birth of Prince George of Cambridge who was born on 22 July, 2013. Why the bilby? Don't know. Notice the metal bilby sculptures on the stone! There were a lot of these metal animal sculptures on the zoo grounds. I loved them.

 An actual live bilby.

Eastern quoll. The quoll belongs to a group of carnivorous marsupials called dasyurids. Now these guys are found only in Tasmania. The spotted "rocks" are the quolls!

Quokka. One of the first Aussie mammals seen by Europeans. They thought it was a giant rat. I have to agree it does look like a HUGE rat!

Here's an actual rat- the black-footed tree-rat. Fairly attractive as rats go.

Ever seen a Himalayan tahr? I don't remember seeing one of these before, but maybe I have. They are found at the Akron Zoo in Ohio, but I haven't visited that zoo for at least 14 years.  The tahr is fairly closely related to the wild goat.

In an area filled with reptiles, there were more metal sculptures. These were educational. Along with signage discussing the differences between turtles and tortoises, there were metal sculptures of each on rock work around the signs.

I really liked the metal sculptures!

Here's another.

You may have noticed that the koala was not included on the above list of widely known critters found in this part of the world. The reason is simple. We didn't really see any at the zoo. The koala area is a photo op only. For a fee, you can enter the outdoor koala area and stand next to a tree with a koala and have your photo taken. If you don't want the photo (or don't want to pay the fee) it's nearly impossible to actually see one. I managed to catch a glimpse of one in a tree by looking through a crack in a gate. It must be a huge money maker for the zoo.

They did have a komodo dragon exhibit so that was nice to see something from "home."

Next, the "Lemur Forest." If you remember our photos from a zoo in The Netherlands, human visitors entered the lemur area with no barriers and free-ranging animals. At Taronga, the lemur exhibit is tightly controlled. You are led in a small group through the walk-through exhibit by a zoo staff member. We didn't wait in line to enter the Lemur Forest.

View of Sydney from the zoo.

An interesting statement on plastics in the waste stream.

Very interesting sculpture on zoo grounds. I hope a lot of people take a moment to let this sink in.

All in all, a nice zoo. One GREAT thing? The zoo map has coordinates on it and things are labeled and indexed per the coordinates. There are signposts with copies of the map showing the coordinates. Makes moving through the zoo easier!