Bushwalk: Spotting Koalas

We took a drive up north, up the coast of Western Australia to Yanchep National Park. Out for a nice quiet, peaceful,  photo shoot in the natural environment.  Just my daughter and I,  plus the 2 grandchildren on school holidays;  oh!  and everyone else’s children showed up too.   Obviously, it was the “cool place” to go.

What hope of spotting wildlife now on our bush walk now?

Other than the kind of bush ‘meet and greet’ that I do not care to see close up, of the long and slithering type. It is a Tiger Snake Sanctuary.  Oh Goodee!

I decided to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best. Something would turn up, show up or be illuminated.  Surely.

 

Yanchep National Park is a wonderfully green park with gorgeous tall eucalyptus trees and other natives that dot the landscape.  Its about 42 kilometres north of Perth, so its quite close and a nice day trip.

Hoping to get plenty of fresh new inspirational ideas and photos to spark my creativity, I took two lenses. I was just thinking of making it real light and easy for myself and using just my 50mm, but I took my old zoom just in case.

You know, “just in case…”?   Its a syndrome I’ve caught.  I think its like a virus or something. I seem to be doing a Lot more of these  “just in case”  things lately.

 

Anyway –

The older zoom, isn’t a great lens, not the sharpest, but glad I took it as it helped target in on the wildlife.

Yanchep,  is derived from an Aboriginal Noongar word   ‘yanjet’  which means bulrushes. Yanchep certainly does have its fair share of bulrushes around as you can look out into the distance and see them cropping up merrily.

Wandering about the lake first,  we wove our way through mayhem and bedlam.  Or rather,  the array of running and darting children.

Looking at the lake, I was quite taken with the red orange tinge of the algae upon the blue waters, especially in the design patterns showing.

 

Next we headed for the tall forest trees, where we were told the koala colony would be.  As they are skilled climbers with their nimble paws and 2-3 inch claws, we all gazed skywards hoping to spot one.

Lucky me, I was the first koala spotter.

 

But my, they are so well camouflaged and very high up in the tree branches. Plus, sleeping in those branches during the day makes it more challenging to locate them.  Their fur is mainly a soft medium ash gray,  with some of them having reddy orange brown sheen to them in places. This provides the perfect ‘blending in’ outfit for the koala.  And harder for me to spot them.

 

I did discover that koala is derived from the Aboriginal word “gula.”

Koalas live in colonies, and live for about 13- 18 years or so.  When these tiny marsupials are born, they’re just 2 centimetres and hairless.   They are not a bear!

 

But they’re so cute when they’re asleep.

Well, we sure enjoyed our bush stroll at Yanchep, tired us all right out!  Spotting all those koalas is exhausting.

Time for a little nap myself.