Koalas spend most of their time eating and sleeping, and I once heard that their diet of high-in-pitch eucalyptus means they don't burn to death in bush fires - they explode! Gruesome.

The komodo dragon is the biggest lizard in the world. From what I saw of this one, they didn't get that way by moving around.

This is one of the many kinds of rock wallaby. Apparently they thought these particular guys were extinct up til the 1960s or so when they found more of them (that seems to happen a lot here).

Now these guys were hunted nearly to extinction - yellow-footed rock wallabies. Their coats were fashionable to wear, and as we all know of course, shooting animals is fun.

This is an echidna, one of the two or three species in the entire world that falls into the category of "monotremes", which is a category made up to put these guys into so we can pretend nature follows nice neat rules and therefore doesn't invalidate all the classification work done previously. I'm not sure exactly what it entails, but this guy wobbled about and was cute, and Dizzy likes them, but I'm more of a platypus man myself, I think they're exceedingly cool (although I couldn't photograph any).

It's some kind of kangaroo! Hopping is more energy-efficient than running once the speeds start getting high apparently - try it sometime!

They call me the Crimson Avenger. You killed my master - now prepare to die!

Hardly native animals but then it is a zoo, and I just had to take this cheeseball photo with the bridge and the Opera House in the background.

I think this guy's from the Himalayas, he's called a red panda but I doubt they're related at all. Looks more like a big fluffy racoon to me.