Welcome to the latest instalment in my This Writing Life adventures. I seem to be having a few this year, and looking at my calendar there are more to come with the Romance Writers of Australia conference in Brisbane next month, along with the New South Wales Rural Women’s Gathering in Narranderra at the end of October and Scone Literary Festival in November.

A few weeks ago, Jim and I booked ourselves in for a weekend in Sydney and a trip to Taronga Zoo, and what a wonderful time we had!

It had been 23 years since we first visited the zoo. We were living in Newcastle back then, and drove down especially. No driving this time. It was buses and trains and a ferry – a far more sensible and less stressful way to get around, and ferry rides are a great way to enjoy the harbour and public transport is excellent for people watching.

Catching the ferry to the zoo.

The zoo has changed quite a bit in the intervening years. There’s now a cable car to take you from the bottom to the top and give you an aerial view of some of the enclosures. There are also new habitats that must be so much better for the animals, but are brilliant for us humans too. My absolute favourite was the squirrel monkey enclosure where you can get up close and personal with the animals. Small groups are led through the enclosure by guides while the monkeys do their monkey thing, darting around feet, gobbling fruit, and climbing all over the place. It was magical!

We were also lucky enough to see a platypus swimming around its pond, which was very cool because they’re notoriously shy and hard to spot. All it took was a bit of patience, something a lot of people didn’t have. We lost count of the number of people who walked through that enclosure, took one glance, declared it empty and moved on. If they’d stayed for a few minutes and watched carefully, they’d have seen the platypus snorkelling around too. Sadly, none of our platypus photos turned out. It was a speedy little thing and the truth is we were too enchanted watching it to bother with much happy-snapping.

We did take lots of other photos. Here’s a few for you to enjoy.

Male Asian elephant. His keeper was doing log rolling and other exercises with him to keep him entertained.

The giraffes at Taronga have a great view

Barbary sheep

Komodo Dragon. Creepy things!

I think this is an inland taipan or fierce snake, which is also the most venomous in the world. Also scarily big and not something I’d like to tread on.

I wouldn’t like to tread on this one either.

Meerkats are cool.

Squirrel monkey. They were adorable.

The lemurs were all huddled under their heat lamps, keeping warm and bonding.

The mandarin ducks were stunningly coloured.

Eclectus parrots. Loved how close you could get to some of the animals. This little girl could nearly touch them.

The seal talk was great fun.

Tasmanian Devil. We caught the last of the keeper talk and it was wonderful to learn that they’re making progress on conserving these animals after being so badly hit by Devil Facial Tumour Disease.

Royal Spoonbill

As you can see from the view, it was a cracking winter’s day for visiting the zoo.

For more information about Taronga Zoo, check out the website. Or better still, go visit!

Hmm. This makes me think we should trip out Dubbo way and visit Western Plains Zoo again. We’ve been a few times before and it’s brilliant. Maybe on the way back from Narranderra. Ooh, now there’s a plan…