Saturday 20th February
Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary at Brisbane
We fed the kangaroos!!!
Total Distance: 12122km
In the morning we drove the long distance from Byron Bay (why are we leaving this place?!?) to Brisbane. From here we'd be leaving behind some members of the team behind (Good Bye Katie, enjoy Oz, I'll come find you in the UK!), but got two new ones (Hello Katie, welcome to the team!)
The main most important activity of the day though was the wildlife sanctuary! The main stars at Lone Pine Koala Reserve have their name on the door. They're cute and cuddly, don't move much until new leaves are added (then they move like cats after nip), and had a million photos taken of them.
We had a quick lunch before splitting into smaller groups to explore. Lone Pine isn't a huge place. It takes maybe 15-20 minutes to get across the public site. Yet the space is actually mostly a pastoral reserve for the kangaroos, with a couple of emus thrown in for company. We bought some kangaroo pellets with lunch then went off to pet roos.
We all had a great time split up amongst the various groups of grazing, sleeping, and playing kangaroos. One youngster bounded over the short grass of the hill from his shade under the eucalyptus tree at the sound of my paper bag. Having fed him I tentatively introduced myself to a mother with a large joey collapsed in her pouch-only hind feet and tail protruding-resting under the shade. I sat down alongside her. She ate hungrily, nearly finishing the bag. That was until the large buck arrived. He came bounding over from the other side of the enclosure, over the shallow hill, and slowed just as his head reached my hand. He wolfed down anything he could get is mouth around. I was a little worried about what he would make of it when I'd run out. Yet I didn't even feel a lived to show him the empty bag, he merely accepted it and chose to move on. To his other hunger for love. We all looked on as he tried to make moves on the mother with joey. Anyway...
We enjoyed watching and feeding them. Their heads look a bit like hares or rabbits, but elongated like a horse. Watching them move was interesting. It's one thing to see the YouTube videos, another to see them really swing their tails for balance in a corner or a whole mob pass across the face of a hill. Of the two emus on was grumpy, but the other one people could stroke its neck.
After a long time here we moved on.
Wombats, fat, round, sleeping on their backs, moving whilst dreaming.
Tasmanian Devils fighting for territory, then going off in a huff before having a bath.
Dingos
Many, many, birds
Platypus!!! One sitting quietly, the other doing laps of the tank.
I'll do a better run down another day. For now, it was amazing.
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