A Plethora of Roos!!!

This is Pebbly Beach. It's one of a hundred little beaches along the coast of southeastern Australia. It just happens to be about a two hour drive from Canberra. Perfect! Its a beautiful beach, but best of all are the kangaroos. Some guy lives on the property and has spent the last fifty years feeding, caring for, and ultimately taming the local kangaroos.  It's one of the few places (non-zoo) in all of Australia where you can approach, sit with, and 'roos. No zoom required for these pics!

Cute Alert: Mama kangaroo with joey!! Cue the awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww's.

Apparently, kangaroo pouches are far roomier than we thought. We're just saying, those are GIANT feet sticking out of that pouch. And he's sound asleep, and the mother doesn't mind. Pouches are weird. 

Next are some scenic beach photos to show you a bit more of the area.  It is absolutely beautiful!  However, while walking across the beach and taking these pictures, we apparently walked a little too close to some ground-nesting bird's babies.  I only assume this since we were suddenly swooped by a large bird multiple times that seemed intent on chasing us to the far end of the beach.  That'll get your adrenaline going.  However, we did notice that it didn't swoop anyone else walking through that same area, so maybe it was just offended by our strange accents... or Greg's bright shirt.

Magpies! This guy badly wanted our picnic lunch. He kept circling us, hoping we wouldn't notice. We did. Poor hungry magpie.

Laurel apparenty smells better than I do. She got nuzzled by them and got to pet them. This is even a mama with a joey in her pouch- might be hard to see. They all stayed a healthy quarter-meter (more metric!) away from me. I'm assuming they were intimidated by my rugged masculinity.

This is a kookaberra, yet another of Australia's unique birds. They are freaking huge. Seriously, it looks like someone took a gorilla and converted it into a bird. Australians say they are the king of the jungle. They do what they want, when they want, and no person or animal is going to tell them any differently. This was evidenced by the kookaberra below flying from his post (picture 1) to a branch (picture 2) nevermind that Laurel's head was in the direct path. No matter he just went about an inch from her head. Laurel literally felt it brush past her neck. Two near bird deaths in one day. Not bad.