Feeding Wild Rock Wallabies on Magnetic Island

I came on this trip equipped with my bible, a.k.a my copy of Lonley Planet's Australia. In it there is a little section about feeding wild rock wallabies on Magnetic Island and apparently it's one of the only places in Australia you can do this. So in my eyes that was my evening sorted.

At about 16:30 I jumped back on the bus to a place called Geoffrey Bay which is where this all happens as they come down out of the woods surrounding the bay. Having purchased some "wallabie feed" which I'm pretty sure is the exact same stuff they feed the giraffes at giraffe manor in Nairobi, off I went in search of these little creatures.

Turned out I didn't have to go far, about 50 meters down the road just off from the beach in fact and there they were chilling on the rocks while people tentatively went up to them.

I of course was over excited and went off to feed them. They are the most adorable creatures.



When the majority of people had left, or got bored, and there were only a few of us left, just before sunset they all started to come right up to you. The reason for this was a man called Vern who had been quietly sitting there waiting for the majority of tourists to leave. He gets around by wheelchair and when I started talking to him he told me he came to feed these wallabies 6 nights a week and had been doing that for the last decade. He knows 40 or 50 of them by site (impressive seeing as to me they all looked 100% the same).

"Is there an Alfa male?" I asked to see if I could at least spot the difference between a male and female "yeah, there" he chuckled" but he doesn't seem to want the job - he is only interested in getting fed".

Afterwards we happened to be in the best place to watch the sun going down behind the hills, all in all a brilliant evening.

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