The Best Zoo in Sydney - Featherdale Wildlife Park

Every visitor of Sydney should know the local fauna that is unique in the world. Australia can boast plenty of interesting endemic species, such as the koala, marsupials, and the dingo. That’s why we decided to visit the local wildlife park so that we could watch these wonderful animals and learn something about them.

Sydney offers several zoos but we decided to visit the interactive Featherdale Wildlife Park. There are mostly only typical Australian animals in this park, with which you can get in close contact. We were attracted by petting and feeding small kangaroos, which for us was a really great experience.

Small kangaroo with a baby in the pouch

How to get to Featherdale

The park is located a bit outside the center of Sydney, but it is still accessible whether you go by car or by public transport. To get there by train, stop at Blacktown and from there, you need to go by bus number 729 from the E platform, which goes to the park directly. Definitely, keep an eye on the bus schedule so that you find connections that follow each other smoothly. If you go by car, you can extend your trip to the Featherdale Wildlife Park with a trip to the Blue Mountains.

A lot of wild parrots come to Featherdale Wildlife Park

What kind of animals you will find there

The koalas and the kangaroos are definitely among the typical Australian animals, and there’s plenty of them in the park. You shouldn’t miss other animals, such as flying foxes, penguins, the short-beaked echidnas, the dingo, different wombats, the Tasmanian devils, and an incredible amount of birds (we really liked the different species of Cockatoos). It is also worth mentioning the reptile house where you can find the most poisonous snakes and spiders in the world. The park also keeps the eastern quoll which is the biggest carnivorous marsupial remaining in Tasmania. The park prepared the farmyard for kids where they can find domesticated animals.

Rare Eastern Quoll resting on stone

The entire Featherdale Wildlife Park is not too big, however, we spent 4 hours in it and it was pleasant. Don’t expect a large zoo where you will wander about and walk kilometers. The park is not particularly sprawling, but this was more like an advantage for us. It was nice to have enough time for everything and to go through everything in peace. The paths are marked well, so it is easy to orientate yourself and find the animal you are interested in at the moment. The park is also very well-kept and clean.

Dingo waits for feeding

We strongly recommend watching the feeding time of each animal. The zoo keepers have a very personal approach to each animal and they tell very interesting stories about them. Definitely, do ask them anything that you are interested in because they are very happy to answer all your questions.

Zoo keeper tells about the Short-beaked Echidna

The park offers an opportunity to take a picture with a koala in the tree, for an additional charge. But as we are photographers ourselves, we didn’t take that opportunity.

Koalas sleep for most of the day

The feeding of kangaroos

The most interesting for us was the feeding of kangaroos. There are several places to feed these animals and you can find vending machines for buying feed for 2 dollars. There is a pass-through in each kangaroo free range area bordered by a low balustrade. The animals can decide whether they will leave their shelter and approach you. During our visit, there were many kangaroos resting under the shelter but we still managed to get some of them to feed. It was cute to watch how they held our hands with their paws while they were eating.

Feeding for kangaroos was enough

We spent a nice afternoon in the Featherdale Wildlife Park, it was real fun and educative. We recommend keeping an eye on the weather forecast before visiting the park because the weather has the biggest impact on the animals’ activity. The sun was behind the clouds in our case, with a little rain at times. Thanks to that, it wasn’t too hot, and we saw most of the animals. If we ever visit Sydney again, we will definitely go through the whole park again.