Featherdale Sydney Wildlife Park

A tour we booked from the start of planning our Australia trip, determined to see a quokka no matter what.

Touching wild quokkas is illegal, but at this wildlife park you can feed and pet them directly.
Since quokkas and many other animals are nocturnal, most tours depart early in the morning to arrive right at opening time.
We gathered early in the morning and headed to the park with our guide.

Listening to our guide's stories about Australian history along the way, we arrived at the park without a moment of boredom and received our entry tickets and a map of the grounds.

The park isn't large, so there was plenty of time, but wanting to see the quokkas before they dozed off, we rushed straight to the quokka enclosure at the back as soon as we entered.
It was our first time seeing one in person, and just as expected, they were absolutely adorable.

When we quickly offered some food, the quokka grabbed my hand and ate from it — and the way it ate was incredibly cute.
I gently petted it between bites and it didn't seem to mind at all.
The fur was much softer than expected.

Since we were the first ones to rush to the quokka area, we had them almost to ourselves for a few minutes.
No matter how long we watched, they stayed cute, so we spent a long time feeding and petting them.

Once the other people in our tour group made their way to the quokkas, we reluctantly gave up our spot and made our way back to leisurely look at the animals we had passed by.

Wallabies were wandering around freely, and they ate eagerly when we offered food.
We took photos with them and petted them — they were much more docile than expected.

We also got to see dingoes and koalas, and got up close with a wide variety of native wildlife.

As more tourists arrived, the animals got fuller, and they stopped approaching even when offered food — so we ended up being the ones begging them to eat.

These animals alone would make a trip to Australia completely worth it.