Where the wild wombats roam

I had seen a number of areas where Wombats live and especially in Victoria frequently came across Wombat droppings. But the only Wombat I've seen was in a sanctuary - and it's photograph is a bad one. So I asked Suzy for a place to see Wombats and she decided we should go to the Northwest of Launcheston, to Narawndapu National Park. So that's where we went after after Golconda. As most of the animals will come out in the dusk, we began in the afternoon first walking along the lake through the bushland, then climbing a hill and then back over the open lawn where we hoped to find the Wombats.

Australia is so special in many ways - one might think it was created by Australian PR experts. All around the world, swans are on nearly immaculate white. Just one is different. Not maybe grey or brownish, nope, it had to be pitch black and with somewhat curly feathers, to make the difference even sharper.

Then, returning from the hill, we crossed the path of the first marsupial inhabitants of the park. Generally, Eastern Greys (sometimes also called a Forester kangaroo) are nothing very special in Australia. But they are less common in Tasmania, there's only few spots to view them - here's one.

As generally in Australia, one can approach any wildlife here much closer than anywhere in Europe. Even the roo mums do not feel a need to put their child in safety. They did appear to be busy observing the environment, but they did not watch out for humans. I have no idea what might be terribly interesting for them as they don't have a predator - and didn't have one for long.

A Pademelon going for it's breakfast was nice to see, but still, the wombats were not yet seen. Only their tracks with their pretty cubic droppings showed evidence they are here somewhere.

But then, near the end of the walk, the Wombats came out of their burrows and walked the lawn pretty much everywhere. They can be surprisingly fast, much fast than they look like. But most of them remained calm making some of the best wildlife models I ever enjoyed.

Like many other marsupials, Wombats prefer the freshly grown, young and juicy grass. Next the lake one certainly finds the juciest leaves. To me, that looked pretty much like a Southamerican Capybara.