The Eco-Lodge is a luxury inn Al Gore could love. It started out as a wildlife research center, and it still runs a hospital for injured native animals, including tiny nocturnal sugar gliders (little marsupials that resemble flying squirrels). But the most satisfied ex-patients seem to be the roos, many of whom linger around the property. "G'day, Clive!" Shayne shouted at one muscular eastern gray that was staring at us. "We have about forty in our mob," he told me. "We can recognize them by their facial features."

You might think Aussies would be blasé about kangaroos. But like most people who grew up in the cities Down Under, I had rarely seen them in the wild. I had never seen a koala outside a petting zoo until this trip. Shayne dropped me off at a hiking trail that was called, inevitably, the Great Ocean Walk. Opened in 2006, it links the remotest shores around Cape Otway. On a honeycombed cliff above Blanket Bay, I happened to look up, then stopped and stood like an idiot, openmouthed. A plump ball of gray fur was snoozing in the fork of a eucalyptus tree just a few feet above my head; his round butt cheeks were firmly wedged on either side of the branch, and his hairy ears fluttered in the breeze. I felt as triumphant as if I'd spotted a snow leopard in the Himalayas; even the crankiest among us has to admit that koalas are the cutest animals on earth. Then, about ten yards farther on, I spotted another one. And another. I soon realized that there were koalas everywhere. As Shayne later told me, "Once you get your eye in, you realize that the cape is thick with 'em." At dusk, the males growl and croak, sounding like old boozers in a pub.

The Great Ocean Road, I was discovering, is Australia's showcase for anthropomorphic wildlife. The village of Anglesea is famous for its golf course, where hundreds of roos cover the fairways at dusk, idly watching the few remaining golfers. At night, greedy possums hold their little paws out for mangoes. Rainbow lorikeets cluster on balconies, screeching drunkenly on fermented nectar, and spiny echidnas busily poke their snouts in the gravel beside trails, too busy to notice the hikers stomping past. There are even tiny fairy penguins, which waddle in formation from the sea caves near Port Campbell. Still, nothing quite beats koalas in the cuteness stakes—at least from a distance. "You just try getting close," a naturalist named John Sutherland confided bleakly at the Aboriginal-run Tower Hill Nature Reserve, a wildlife haven inside an extinct volcano crater near Port Fairy. "They've got razor-sharp claws, and they bite. But the very first thing they'll do is pee all over you." He smiled ruefully at the memory of a few choice encounters. "Smells like eucalyptus, though, so it's not too bad."

"If you're into history," Shayne confided over a beer that night, "you can actually stay at the old Cape Otway lighthouse. It's a bit rough around the edges, but it's got plenty of"—he paused, casting about for a polite term—"atmosphere."