Australia is a wonderful country to road trip in: campsites are great, roads straight (distances could be shorter though… ), people friendly and loads to see for free. Amazing scenery, mountains, deserts, beaches, ocean, you name it. One of the best things is, in my opinion, that you are able to spot a lot of wildlife there. I don’t think that is the case in Europe? Or who has seen lynxes, badgers, wolves or bears in the wild? Even foxes are rare, and it seems to me you only see elks when driving.
So when road tripping around Australia, I did a lot of animal spotting. Here a few of the places I enjoyed most (hope you like camping..).
Raymond Island, Victoria, was great for seeing koalas, colourful birds and kangaroos. It was also lovely (in my opinion, the others would have been happy to sleep further) to be woken up by koalas on a camp site in Apollo Bay.
Kangaroo Island, SA, was great for animals (with free campsites too, however, there were no facilities either. At least not back then): we saw echidnas, New Zealand fur seals, sea lions, pelicans and a number of other smaller birds
Wilsons Promontory was great: wombats, rozellas and emus. One wombat even came to our camp to say hi (and left a stinky statement on the bottles we had forgotten outside the tent) and rozellas were so tame that you could get a great look at them. I was happy to see the big alfa male kangaroo only from the distance though.
In the Grampians we woke up to this (and I recommend the pinnacle walk there too!):
In Echuca a possum wanted to join our camp, and in the beautiful Port Fairy we were welcomed by a playful wallabe.
Even if I tried, I never saw a platypus nor whales, so I will have to go back. (The cute Phillip Island penguins were also worth watching but that pleasure we had to pay for, and no cameras were allowed).
Obviously there are loads of other places to go to, these were just the most memorable to me. Do you have a place or story to share, where you were impressed by how close you could get to wildlife in the nature?
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I agree, alot less wildlife to see in Europe. We see deer, pheasant and different birds and frogs.
For me the most amazing wildlife spotting were the humpback whales in Monterrey, California and the alligators in the swamp in New Orleans, LOuisiana.
I love to get up close and personal with wild animals, it is such a great experience and looks like you really got to experience Australias wildlife!!
I really liked it!
You have had a lot of good animal spotting but you also went to some great camping sites…..I love camping and looking forward to it when we get back. Possums are a pain and everywhere you don’t want them(sorry…) we had a kookaburra family living in a gum tree outside out house and I loved hearing them early too. Your right, Australia does have some good sights!
…and still I find possums cute 🙂 Oh, the kookaburras… and all the other colourful birds too!
I found campsites in Australia generally great. Good facilities, tidy, and social. I also loved the way many parks had bbq’s for everyone to use with a few coins. It made life easy.
Wow you did great seeing so many!
The penguins on Philip island are great but so is the koala sanctuary. Just before you get onto the island they feed pelicans daily which were also wonderful.
I think we went to the koala sanctuary too…? Can’t be sure anymore. But sadly I have missed the feeding of the pelicans.
You did well with the wombat!
Or the wombat did well with us: my friend had to literally step aside because the wombat clearly was not going to walk around us!
Glad you found us friendly!
The possums are easy to spot in Brisbane, but here the most common things are the small reptiles. I’m not even sure what half of them are called. We see jellyfish out on the SUP boards, and once I saw a penny turtle, too, though I’m not entirely sure it should have been there… it looked like an escape from a pet shop…
My NZ-in-laws are very amused be my excitement to see possums, and then they remind me of them being a pest over there. I guess it is all about seeing the animals you are not used to from home? I was pretty happy not to spot crocodiles, snakes or spiders in the wild, though.