Taronga Zoo

Sydney and Melbourne each have a zoo and an aquarium. We opted to visit the zoo in Sydney because it sounded like the setting on a hill overlooking the harbour was interesting in itself. 

The entertaining way to get to the zoo is by ferry from Circular Quay then by gondola to the entrance. You then work your way down through the zoo back to the ferry. 

We visited the zoo right after we returned from Manly Beach, with a short wait in between ferries. We found the zoo a little confusing to navigate. There’s no single path through the exhibits and we ended up backtracking to see the animals we were interested in. They have animals from all over the world; we were most interested in Australian animals. We saw kangaroos, koalas, and wallabies. We tried to see a platypus but he was hiding. There were multiple aviaries with lots of interesting birds. Many of the birds here are colorful and very noisy. There was one area where you could walk around inside the enclosure with kangaroos, wallabies, and emu. It was nice to not have a barrier between you and the animals. And I got my first look at penguins, which I’ve been looking forward to on this trip.