Well, you guessed right from the title, Hanna's childhood dream of seeing a Tasmanian Devil has been fulfilled! For some reason when I was a child I chose to do a school project on the Tasmanian Devil ( I think because it seemed sort of exotic) and have since wanted to see one in person! And they are REALLY cute!!! Unfortunately we had to make our way to a wildlife park here in Tasmania to see one because they are endangered, primarily because they seem to be susceptible to this type of cancer that is spread like a virus called Devil Facial Tumour that eventually causes suffocation and starvation (poor little guys). They also feed off of dead animals so they frequently get hit by cars when they are feeding off roadkill. So because their numbers are so small in the wild now, it's pretty hard to see one if they are not in captivity. There are numerous breeding programs that have been put into place to try and make sure that they don't become extinct, but unfortunately efforts to find a cure for the cancer have been (as the article put it) "depressingly fruitless." Anyways, we went to this Wildlife park and saw them today and they are always on the move, kind of skipping around and they look so ragged and ugly that they are cute. I could have watched them for hours. We also got a close up encounter with some kangaroos and got to feed them so I was kind of freaking out over that. The one Kangaroo ripped the whole bag of food out of Dan's hand and ate the paper bag before the food...apparently that was tastier!
We had another few nice evenings of camping at another National Park in Tasmania. We saw some more wildlife including some baby Pademelons (kind of like mini-kangaroos) that were maybe one of cutest things I have seen in my life. I still can't get used to the wildlife hopping rather than walking or running...it cracks me up every time we are sitting at our campsite and something bounces by! This particular national park also allowed us to make campfires (and even supplied us with firewood!) so that made us (in particular Dan) very happy. At nights we would drive to the flat grassy areas and wait for the Wombats (kind of like little teddy bears) to emerge and watch them for awhile, and then head back to our campsite and enjoy a nice fire.
Tonight we are flying back to Melbourne and will spend the next month on mainland Australia. We just booked a flight for the beginning of March to Singapore, so that will begin our Asian adventure. Hope you are all well and we will keep you posted!
Love Hanna and Dan
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