Kids, Koalas & ‘Roos

Lights twinkled on the calm waters of Sydney Harbor as the sun set. Yachts glowed like fireflies, bobbing among the piers. Couples strolled along the paved waterfront while hints of jasmine wafted by in the cool breeze.

And inside the elegant Imperial Peking restaurant my family came to grips with its collective inner Disney.

The menu featured, in addition to the more predictable Chinese items, kangaroo. Filet, satay, sizzling, barbecue, in Peking sauce, chili.

What? Eat baby Roo’s mother Kanga? Who are we? Barbarians?

“I just can’t eat anything furry and sweet,” declared our 11-year-old, Stephanie. Samantha, 14, and Elizabeth, 6, neither of whom are known for their overweening sentimentality, concurred.

They had landed in Australia to cuddle kangas, not to conquer them. Yet, here in black and white, was raw evidence of the ‘roo’s commodity status. Shocking.

We let them off the hook by settling on another native animal, one that had fewer cartoon-driven advocates: crocodile. The lightly fried fillets had the chewy consistency of clam strips combined with a sweet, slightly fishy flavor. Not bad. (We did bring back to the states, purely for gross-out purposes, a bag of teriyaki-flavored ‘roo jerky. Stephanie’s sixth-grade class ate it all.)

Most American children probably associate Australia’s wildlife, as ours did, with the cute (‘roos and koalas) and the mean and deadly (sharks and jellyfish). Meeting the country’s animal icons hand-to-paw (or fin) is one great reason to spend a couple of weeks Down Under. There’s more to explore, of course: history served in digestible slices at city museums, homey customs like billy tea and damper, and even some animals that are cute, Australian and don’t have their own public relations teams.

We focused our visits to Sydney and Melbourne around animals and history. The animal aspect was easily addressed via two package tours to nearby wildlife parks that allow very close encounters with the animals. Our educational goals (hey, we haven’t been parents for 14 years for nothing) were to expose the kids to Australian history, particularly its peculiar roots as a British penal colony and the simultaneous encroachment on aboriginal land.

Arriving in Sydney at 8:30 a.m., after a 16-hour nonstop flight, we were relieved to check in at our hotel for a much-needed freshening. At the recommendation of friends, we’d booked at the Quay West, an all-suite hotel in Sydney’s historic Rocks district. We tumbled out of the hotel and downhill and ran into our first historical markers--the site of the first execution in Sydney (convict Thomas Barrett, hanged Feb. 27, 1788, for stealing provisions) and of the first jail (or as the English spell it, gaol), built 1797 within a block of the gallows.

One of the harbor’s many peninsulas, long ago occupied by makeshift jails and miserable convicts, the Rocks is now a trendy shopping center rife with everything Australian from gems to abstract, aboriginal-inspired Coogi-brand sweaters. Details of the area’s history are outlined within the Rocks Visitor Centre at 106 George St., right next to Cadmans Cottage, the oldest house in Sydney, built in 1816.

It wasn’t hard to find a ferry to Darling Harbour, where the Sydney Aquarium is located. Ferries are to Sydney what taxis are to most U.S. cities--but a lot more fun. The ferry cost our family about $10. Why bother to take a long tour of the harbor when you can boat to any destination?

Ten minutes after clambering on at Circular Quay, adjacent to the Rocks--the departure point for all harbor ferries--we were on the dock at the Sydney Aquarium. We are big aquarium fans, having visited about a dozen in the U.S., but nothing prepared us for the underwater tunnels that are the centerpiece here.

Once inside, we immediately bore right (a habit ingrained by U.S. traffic laws that served us poorly in Australia) and down a series of ramps to the Open Ocean exhibit, which is set into the harbor itself. Long clear acrylic tunnels arched over us, forming a U-shaped hallway on the floor of a deep tank, a concept pioneered by the Sydney Aquarium. Manta rays silently slid over our heads; we looked up right into the jaws of a gray nurse shark as it swished over our shoulders. Turtles nuzzled the side of the tube, looking us in the eye as though expecting a handout.

The aquarium’s traditional tanks provided a primer on the startlingly bright fish of the coral reef, giving us a good frame of reference for personal exploration scheduled for later in our trip. A mangrove swamp exhibit, with its thickets of trees harboring their own microsystems of amphibians and fish, plus a 12-foot-long example of the saltwater crocodiles that inhabit northern Australia, rounded out our overview of the finny side of Australian wildlife.

*

On to the furry side. One of our main goals was to actually stroke ‘roos and koalas. Whether or not it is appropriate for businesses to own animals and daily subject them to the eager ministrations of tourists like us is a topic of ongoing debate in Australia. Some animal rights activists want to ban all animal touching altogether--and, in fact, Sydney’s Taronga Zoo keeps the animals out of reach.

Private parks, however, capitalize shamelessly on the desire of tourists to “cuddle a koala.” So, we ended up at the Koala Park sanctuary in suburban West Pennant Hills, a half-hour’s drive from the Rocks. Though it was a soggy day with rain dripping from the arching eucalyptus branches, the park was more than open for business.

First, we were treated to an Australian bush tradition--billy tea and damper served under a corrugated tin roof. The tea is no more than ordinary English breakfast tea prepared in an unconventional manner: In an empty tin can, blackened by soot, our guide poured boiling water and a handful of finely cut tea leaves. She took the pot by its wire handle and swung it over her head in a wide arc, circling five times. Centrifugal force keeps the tea in the pot and forces the leaves to the bottom. Damper is bread baked in another tin can over an open campfire and smeared with an Australian favorite, sweet, clear cane sugar syrup.

On to the main event. Under a tall canvas canopy several koalas were lolling in the forks of short trees languidly chewing eucalyptus leaves. Their diet, which consists only of those leaves, not even water, is so low in carbohydrates that their entire lives consist of eating, digesting and snoozing. Not a bad lifestyle, observed the grown-ups.

Though koalas bite, have long claws that scratch and are ill-tempered, they are cute. The much-ballyhooed “cuddle” consists of stroking a koala’s back or maybe putting an arm around it.

Koalas have a low tolerance for touching of any sort and the one we were presented with proved it. Barely had Stephanie started gingerly touching its back when it roused enough to scoot along the top of the fence that it had been sitting on. Stephanie pursued, but the koala exhibited surprising energy and our daughter had to settle for her brief encounter.

Not discouraged in the least, we headed off for the sentimental favorite, the ‘roos. There they sat, soggy in the rain and making only a few token hops in their mud-slicked enclosure. Accustomed to being approached, these ‘roos were more cooperative than the ornery koala, even letting Stephanie and Elizabeth reach down to pat the head of a joey snug and dry in its mother’s pouch.

Then came the surprise of the day: wombats. Wombats are heavy, solid marsupials about the size of a footstool and with as much charisma. They had little popular appeal until an enormous, accident-prone wombat called “Fatso” starred in a hit Australian television show. Now, wombats are all the rage, and are touted on T-shirts, key chains, on yellow “wombat crossing” placards and in all sizes of stuffed toys.

The wombats appear to be reveling in their newfound popularity. At the Koala Park sanctuary, they squealed and trotted around their enclosure when they saw us coming. They affectionately rubbed the leg of their keeper and nuzzled his knees looking for treats.

*

We hadn’t exhausted Sydney, but it exhausted us. When we arrived later in Melbourne, we decided to explore at a less breakneck pace. That turned out to be a natural, since Melbourne moves at a different pace. Sydney strides, but Melbourne strolls.

Just walking down to the old-fashioned red trolleys that run through the middle of Melbourne’s streets, we felt like we were in Georgian England. Neo-Gothic churches, office buildings and apartments of arched and carved gray stone line the streets.

While we were walking, Melbourne’s perpetual clouds parted and graced us with a warm, mellow late afternoon for exploring Fitzroy Gardens, just to the west of downtown Melbourne. When visiting Melbourne with children, it’s de rigueur to make a day trip to Phillip Island and the “penguin parade.” We opted again for a packaged tour. We made the obligatory stop at Melbourne’s Koala Conservation Centre to see koalas high up in trees from the vantage point of a two-story boardwalk (no cuddling here).

Finally we arrived at Phillip Island--joined to the mainland by a bridge--a sanctuary for seals and the most photogenic Fairy Penguins. The penguins live in burrows in the sandy dunes and under the bushes that dot the island. They spend their days fishing in the bay and, like proper commuters, come home at dusk to their mates and babies in the nest.

The evening commute has been dubbed by hyperventilating publicity types as the penguin parade. In reality, it is a parade of hundreds of people who wend their way across the broad boardwalk to concrete bleachers that rise up above a small south-facing cove. We wondered what the penguins might do that was so cute that we would risk frostbite to see it. At that moment when the sun’s glow is starting to fade, we found out. A little black head popped up from a wave off to our left.

The rest of this lone scout quickly followed. The 15-inch-tall penguin scuttled ashore, looked us all over and promptly plunged back into the waves.

Ten minutes later, we caught sight of a penguin, wings outstretched, silhouetted black in a rising blue-green wave. Within moments, it and a dozen others waded ashore, almost. Flipper deep, they stood in the shallows, falling back into receding waves only to pop up again and regroup. Other groups materialized from the surf and played in the foam.

Finally, they waddled with determination up the beach. We scrambled to the boardwalk and hung over the railings, watching the penguins plod home, unerringly scooting to the right nests. It was a fitting end. We felt the way the penguins looked--satisfied with the journey but glad to be heading home. Waiting the next day in the Melbourne airport, I asked the kids how they’d summarize the trip.

“Oh, I want to come back. I want to see more of Sydney,” Samantha said. “Me too. I want to see the outback and go back to the Great Barrier Reef,” Stephanie added.

Then they looked at each other, looked at me, and paid Australia the ultimate teenager’s compliment: “We want to come back by ourselves.”

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GUIDEBOOK

Australia’s Animal Kingdom

Getting there: Qantas, American, United and Air New Zealand fly nonstop between LAX and Sydney. Advance-purchase, round-trip fares start at about $1,300.

Where to stay: Sydney has great lodging variety, including many hostels and guest houses. Some representative places:

Quay West, 98 Gloucester St., The Rocks; telephone 011-61-29-240-6000. Double about $247.

Stafford Quest, 75 Harrington St., The Rocks; tel. 011-61-29-251-6711. Double about $167.

Sydney Park Inn, 2-6 Francis St., downtown; tel. 011-61-29-360-5988. Double about $109.

Wynyard Vista Hotel, corner of Margaret and York streets; tel. 011-61-29-274-1222. Good central location; rooms about $130.

The Kendall, 122 Victoria St., Kings Cross; tel. 011-61-29-357-3200. Boutique hotel in the heart of the Cross; double room about $115 including continental breakfast.

The Regent, 199 George St., tel. 011-61-29-238-0000, near Circular Quay and the Rocks; great views, upper floors. Rooms about $300.

Sydney Hilton, 259 Pitt St.; tel. 011-61-29-266-0610. From $220 single, $260 double, with occasional deals, especially in winter.

In Melbourne: Station Pier Condominiums, 15 Beach St., Port Melbourne, near downtown; 011-61-39-647-9666. Double $180.

For more information: Aussie Helpline; tel. (847) 296-4900, fax (847) 635-3718.