Last Day - Taronga Zoo

Many people we spoke with highly recommended the Taronga Zoo in Sydney.  Having been to a few zoos we debated it a bit but after hearing that they had platypuses we had to go.

To get to the zoo you take a 20 min ferry from Circular Quay which means more views of the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, and Fort Denison, where they would imprison the worst convicts of the bunch.

Bridge walkers

Once you get to the zoo it has a gondola that takes you up to the top of the hill that the zoo in built on.  On the way up you get an amazing view looking back out over the harbour with the Bridge, Opera House and downtown Sydney.  It also means that most of the day is spent walking downhill which is nice especially since it was 31C and humid.

The highlight of the day was the platypus house.  It was the one classic Australian animal that we hadn't managed to see anywhere else.  Platypuses are nocturnal so they have them indoors and have the lighting set up so they think it is nighttime during zoo hours.  They have a large double sided tank in the middle of the room and then another tank along one whole wall.  It took a little while to finally spot one but once we did it stuck around for several laps of the tank.  Eventually another started doing laps in the other tank as well so we had lots of chances to check them out.

Overall it was a nice zoo and I can see why many people recommended it.  The enclosures weren't as large as some of the ones we had seen at the Australian Zoo but there was effort to make them look natural.  They also had a large variety (lemurs, giraffes, elephants, zebras, chimpanzees, pygmy hippos, lions, tigers, gorillas, etc).

Komodo Dragon

Ringtailed Lemur

A Tasmanian devil

A gorilla family doting on their newborn

The kids had a great day and once again Avery showed off her amazing ability to find whatever creature was hiding.  She has always loved look-and-find books so I guess this shouldn't be a shock but it still amazes me.  We'd be staring at what looked like an empty enclosure for minutes and she'd run over and say "look at the x up on that tree there".  Every zoo was the same thing, it was amazing. It was also particularly useful at this zoo because when it's this hot the animals are usually hiding in the shade.  As much as the rain that we had on some of the other days made us a bit soggy it did make for excellent views of the animals by comparison.

We stayed until closing and then headed back on the ferry.  We then decided to go out for supper to celebrate our last night.  We did a short walk from Circular Quay to the Rocks which is the oldest part of Sydney and found a great Italian restaurant.  After dinner we did our last minute souvenir shopping and then back on the bus up the hill to the hotel.


Avery bought a flower necklace.  The flower looks like the one from the frangipani tree.  We saw these trees in many of the cities and Avery picked up many of the flowers off of the ground along the way.

Trent bought a boomerang with a platypus and a kangaroo design on it.