Tasmania's Wildlife

One of the things I loved about Tasmania was its weirdly unique species of wildlife often to be found wandering around on the roadside verges, although sadly also splashed across the road surface as roadkill after a clash with the huge logging trucks.

These are just a few that we came across on our journey...

The elusive duck billed platypus - yes it really exists(!) - swiming along in a creek in a small town. (You may need to zoom in to see him properly,  he was moving very  fast)

Maria Island National Park, accessible only by the twice-daily National Parks boat, is home to many species of native wildlife. We saw wombats up close, plus wallabies and kangaroos, who were more wary of getting close.

This kookaburra lived in the trees surrounding the wonderful B&B, Bed In The Treetops

We saw several echidnas by the roadside - like a large hedehog with long spines and a very long proboscis for digging out insects. They seemed to tolerate us getting quite close..

Not exactly in the wild, these fascinating creatures were in the seahorse breeding farm...

The iconic Tasmanian Devil is now an endangered species and can rarely be found in the wild. We visited the wildlife reserve to see these creatures living under the protection of the reserve..

On our very last day I was lucky enough to see this baby possum, awaking from a snooze right beside the path in the cafe where we stopped for coffee...

Throughout our journey we saw and heard a beautifully vivid blue little bird everywhere, wonderfully named the Superb Fairy Wren. It was much too quick to capture on film so I had to make do with this picture of one as a wind chime (not real!) ..