A Wild Life

Made it to the Gold Coast. Long, long day-- one of the German girls who gave me a ride was bitten by a spider just as we were preparing to leave. All you hear when you come to Australia is how the top 20 most venomous creatures in the world live here, so she was understandably terrified even though our host, Chris, insisted it was just a black ant bite. It was, but she went to the emergency room anyway to get it checked out. I walked down to the (gorgeous, incredible) beach via a beautiful cliff walk while I waited for the girls to return from the hospital. We got underway several hours late and I had to get my host for tonight to give me a ride from Byron Bay, which he luckily was willing to do. (I am his first surfer and he is cutely eager to do right by me.) Anyway, the point of this post is to tell you how awesome today was, despite the dely, because I saw the following Iconic Australian Animals:

Koala in the wild: Check
Koala up close in a hospital: Check
Kookaburra: Check
Wild kangaroo: Check check (yes!)

For the record, I also saw:
Wild parrot
Wild turkey
Gecko

Still waiting on the platypus and dingo, but you can't have everything. Especially not within a 24 hour period.