After the new year, my host and his roomie had to go back to work, so I planned an extra little one-night trip to Newcastle to meet another former Couchsurfer from Australia (hi Ollie!) and his divine Chilean girlfriend. It's easy to take a 3-hour train ride from Sydney to Newcastle. Unlike Sydney, however, Newcastle doesn't have much intra-city transit, so we were pretty reliant on cars there. On the morning before I left to come back to Sydney, Ollie took us to one of the highlights of my trip: the Blackbutt animal reserve. He told me to google it to get the opening hours but I couldn't find anything with that name. I see now that I was typing "blackbart" because I assumed he was dropping the R's like everyone else in this part of the world. Or perhaps I assumed no one would ever name anything "blackbutt."
We went quite early in the morning, which Ollie said must be the way to go since he never saw the animals so active when he came in the afternoon.
You guys.
I petted.
A WALLABY.
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| Wallaby love. |
A koala snoozing.
A baby kangaroo getting into his mom's pouch.
Aussie accents talking about wombats. My life has definitely peaked.
After my quick Newcastle visit, I came back to Sydney to have a lovely and much needed home-cooked meal with a family friend (thanks, Karine and Thora!). From there, I spent one last night in Sydney before being on my way to the north and south islands of New Zealand, which will be what I write about next!
