My Wonderful Wallaby Adventure

Remember the middle and high school shoe trend of wallabees? The bulky tan footwear and the fake address of 42 Wallaby Way Sydney, yes, it’s made-up sorry to ruin your childhood, is about all I knew about wallabies before this week. Sunday, a few of us made the two-hour journey out of Sydney and to Palm Beach where we boarded a ship toward the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and the Basin campground, which housed the wallaby reserve.

I thought I would leave Sydney obsessing over kangaroos until I discovered their smaller and cuter counterpart on the beach. Scattered all over the campground little wallabies were hopping around and curiously watching the people. Of course, we all immediately pulled out our cameras and saw how close we could get to our new favorite animal. Most of the animals would watch us and then hop away at the last second, not wanting us to get too close to them. However, there was one wallaby that seemed to be inching closer and closer to our group. I bent down on the ground and was astonished when the animal hopped right over to me, letting me pet her and not getting spooked when the rest of the group crowded around on the ground. She visited everyone in the group, letting all of us give her attention and loving every moment. That is when the curious wallaby snuck into a backpack and found herself a snack she would quickly become obsessed with. We may or may not have hand fed a wallaby that day and it may or may not have been the cutest thing any of us have ever seen. She was climbing into our laps and hugging our arms to get what she wanted. For no reason what-so-ever, we named our new best friend Chip and spent the rest of our time on the campground loving on her.

After a while, we gained the attention of a Park Ranger while Chip was posing for pictures and cuddling up to each one of us. He came over and explained why Chip was the friendliest of all the wallabies. At a very young age her mother was fatally hit by a car and the Ranger depouched Chip and hand raised her, making the orphan extremely social and curious around humans. Now that we knew her backstory, we felt even more connected to Chip and were very tempted to sneak her into a backpack and back to the Urbanest dorms. However, right when it was time for us to get on the ferry, our wallaby friend gave us all goodbye snuggles before hopping off with her own kind.
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You could easily say that Sunday was the best day of my Australian adventure so far. Not only did we successfully travel out of Sydney without getting completely lost, we got to hike to see breathtaking views and make a lifelong furry friend.


Cheers,
Victoria