A walk on the wild side in the Swan Valley
Gemma Nisbet gets up close and personal at a wildlife park.
The flying fox is near the front of his enclosure, suspended upside down from the mesh roof, flapping his wings furiously, looking at us intently, an unmistakeable sense of urgency in his demeanour. I have the uncanny sense he is trying to tell us something.
“Maybe he wants us to keep our voices down so his friends can sleep,” I speculate. Behind him, his mates are wrapped up snugly in their black wings, their little eyes closed tightly against the midday sun.
“I think he wants us to go away,” someone else suggests. We don’t move. There’s something hypnotic about the movement of his wings and the sound as they whoosh-whoosh through the air.
And then the flying fox makes his feelings known in the clearest way possible: a light spray of something wet and whiffy, aimed in our direction.
“Ugh.” We are all wiping ourselves in disgust. “Did we just get peed on by a flying fox?”
I dig around in my bag for a tissue. “We can’t say he didn’t warn us.”
The flying fox sees us off with a final triumphant flap of his wings, but luckily there are plenty of other, more continent, creatures to visit here at Caversham Wildlife Park — more than 2000 of them, I later learn.
In fact, in just this section of the park — dedicated to animals from northern Australia — there are dingoes and emus, big lizards and a massive bald eagle, some spiny echidnas huddled sleeping in their nest, a little freshwater crocodile and lots more.
Elsewhere, kangaroos and wallabies hop around, much to the delight of the other visitors, mostly camera-toting overseas tourists. There are colourful cockatoos with their names printed on their enclosure, a scattering of reptiles, all manner of cute little marsupials, even farm animals that you can feed.
But the real star of the show, and what has drawn us here today, is a wombat. A friend had heard about the park’s thrice-daily Meet Wombat and Friends sessions — where visitors can be photographed with various animals, including the pudgy marsupials — and thought it would be an ideal way to celebrate my birthday. (What this reveals about her opinion of me, I’m not entirely sure.)
Arriving for the first wombat show of the day at 11am, we join the queue forming in front of the small stage where an enormous wombat is slumped indiscreetly on the lap of his handler. Put it this way: we’re in no doubt this is a male of the species.
When our turn comes, there’s much giggling as we’re directed to sit either side of wombat and handler, and instructed to place a hand on each of the closest hind legs as we smile for the camera. The wombat, meanwhile, seems to be asleep.
There are other animals to meet, too. We pet a tiny, sleepy bettong and hold a snake, its muscles flexing beneath its smooth skin. There’s a bobtail lizard, a hungry possum with its nose buried in a bowl of seeds and various Australian birds. Our favourite is a little owl with spooky, staring yellow eyes, which reveals itself to be surprisingly affectionate, cooing with pleasure — almost like a cat purring — when its handler scratches its feathers.
Later, we pat a fluffy koala perched lazily amid a buffet of bright-green eucalyptus leaves, watch a pair of Tasmanian devils lope around their enclosure and play an avian version of Where’s Wally, trying to spot the tawny frogmouths camouflaged against the grey-tree trunks in their aviary.
And after that, we head further into the Swan Valley, to Lamont’s for a long lunch under the trees: warm bread and French butter, tasty things to nibble at, a bottle of sparkling wine, sunlight dappling through the canopy of leaves.
“Why don’t we do this more often?” someone asks.
Next time, we’ll know to give the flying fox a wide berth.
FACT FILE
See cavershamwildlife.com.au and lamonts.com.au for details.
For other attractions in the Swan Valley, go to swanvalley.com.au.
