Australia is home to many unusual animals that you won't find anywhere else in the world.

This is a Koala, often incorrectly called a Koala Bear. The koala is more closely related to the sloth than the bear.

Shy, slow moving, gentle and feeds exclusively on eucalyptus leaves. Koalas are very shy and you don't see many of them. This one was about 40 feet up in a tree on my niece's cane farm.

They won't purposely hurt you, however if they mistake you for a tree, they may try and climb you and they have very strong, sharp claws.

The kangaroo's a popular animal, especially with tourists, not so much with farmers!

The female gives birth to a tiny baby, that spends the first part of its life living in the mother's pouch. A baby kangaroo is called a Joey.

There are many varieties of kangaroo from the Big Red Kangaroo, the largest found in the desert areas to the common Grey pictured here.

A cousin to the kangaroo is the wallaby - they look very similar to a kangaroo but are much smaller.

One of the strangest of all is the Platypus. The platypus is a monotreme - a mammal that lays eggs.

The platypus has a bill like a duck, webbed feet like a duck, the body of an otter and a tail like a beaver.

Platypus are extremely shy and live in rivers and billabongs (a billabong is a semi-circular body of water, left as meandering rivers dry up) in certain parts of Australia.

They breathe air, but are able to hold their breath for 15-20 minutes at a time. They will often surface for just a few seconds and disappears for 15 minutes while they hunt for worms, their favourite meal.

We have some unique birds too. The white bird with the yellow crest is a Sulphur Created Cockatoo. These birds make great pets, they are excellent talkers (better than many people would like, they seem to understand all the bad words!) and they can live to 100 years of age, often outliving their owners.

These are Kookaburras, the largest (I believe) kingfisher in the world. They make a noise like someone laughing really, really loudly.