Featherdale Wildlife Park, located in Western Sydney, is one of Sydney’s top wildlife parks. Specialising in Australian native wildlife and birds, this beautiful park allows the public to be highly interactive with selected wildlife, with many hand feeding opportunities!
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Being animal enthusiasts we love getting as much hands on experience with wildlife as possible everywhere we go. During our visit we had countless opportunities to hand feed the plentiful numbers of paddy melons, wallabies and kangaroos. Feed was presented in waffle cones which they absolutely loved! It’s almost impossible not to have a great experience! Sections of the park allowed certain wildlife, such as paddy melons, kangaroos and wallabies to roam as they please which allowed us to get close, however, taking their welfare into consideration there were ‘rest’ areas which were inaccessible to the public. Due to the constant interaction with visitors you could easily acknowledge how friendly and comfortable these animals were around people
One of the perks of this particular park, unlike most other parks which charge an additional fee, visitors are able to meet and take photos with koalas at no extra cost. Koalas are kept in enclosures for viewing, however, due to their nature the only contact allowed during the ‘meet and greet’ is a gentle pat on the bottom of their backside. A select few were on display for photos and we took a photo with a very adorable photogenic koala.
Having already met the majority of Australia’s native wildlife by this point, whether it be in the wild or wildlife parks, it was actually our first encounter with Quokkas as they naturally reside in Western Australia. These adorable looking marsupials are pretty small in size, similar sized to a cat, and even though they were housed in enclosures we could easily reach over and hand feed from above.
The paddy melons, resembling a small wallaby, were also very interested in food, allowing us to pet them and take photos as we pleased. Having briefly encountered a paddy melon in Tasmania during our road trip (click here for our Tasmania adventure) it was lovely to interact with this species.
Animal talks were scheduled at certain times which gave us a better insight to some of the animals, such as the Tasmanian devil, echidnas, dingo’s and little penguins (‘little’ is their actual name!). The layout of the park made it easy to walk around in a logical fashion, covering all areas of the park and it was nicely set up with clean sizable enclosures, housing wildlife to meet their own requirements. The ‘walk in’ enclosures were the most enjoyable as animals would surround you looking for waffles. We found the park was quite kid friendly, with a ‘face in hole’ poster board, a ‘How do you measure up’ poster and a nice added touch was the ‘Passport’ where children were able to stamp their books in each area of the park visited.
All in all we thoroughly enjoyed our visit and highly recommend this park if you are looking for an interactive experience with the main Australian natives.
To visit their website click on the following: FEATHERDALE WILDLIFE PARK