Mark & Tracey had told us the night before about this Koala Sanctuary called Lone Pine that is located just south of Brisbane where you can cuddle a koala and handfeed kangaroos. You can check it out online @ http://www.koala.net,/ and in Swedish at www.koala.net/se.
We were like little kids running around a zoo for the first time. The koalas were all just sort of doing what koalas do, sleeping in the trees. But they were so incredibly cute doing it! We went to an little informative seminar on the little guys and then rushed off to have our pictures taken with Gando, a very cheeky little koala. So cheeky, that he pooped in my hand! Lovely. But you couldn't get upset, because he was so damn cute.
The "official" photos are up on the web at:
http://www.koala.net/photo/1803034158en.htm (Jonathan)
http://www.koala.net/photo/1803034059en.htm (Siobhan)
After cleaning myself up a bit, we bought some kangaroo food and walked into this massive enclosure full of kangaroos. You would never see anything like this in the U.S. There is no attendant or any one facillitating anything, you just buy a bag of food and walk into a huge pen with heaps of all sorts of kangaroos & wallaby's. The only advice you are given is a sign that says, "Approach slow, Stay low, Feed with a flat hand."
Jon was a little disappointed that they kept the Red Kanagroos seperated because he really wanted to take a photo with one, but I completely understand why when we saw they are over 2 meters tall standing up! He did fall in love with this one little pretty-faced wallaby joey that was amazing adorable & what a little personality.
After feeding the kanagroos, we went around looking at all of the different exhibits of the koalas. There are over 130 little buggers on the property, and all amazing adorable.
Onto the bird section, they also do a lorikeet show, but we skipped that because we had them in our backyard in Nambour. The cockatoos were really neat; we had a great time "talking" to them; one of the sulfur crested cocktoos kept saying "Yabba Dabba Doo," whenever Jon spoke to him and would mimic all of Jon's movements, if he leaned left the bird would, etc. etc.
They also have dingoes, fruit bats, wombats, echindas to name a few. It was a great day, the only thing we were upset about was Jon was really looking forward to seeing the Tasmanian Devil and he was "on holiday."
We ended up having to cut our trip a little short sadly, because we both just started to feel worse and worse as they day went on. In the carpark, we saw Lars & his girlfriend returning from their weekend trip to the turtle roockery just outside of Bundaberg, about 300 kms north of here. It's a bit of a hike, but they had such rave reviews about the experience that we are trying to organise something for this weekend while the baby loggerhead turtles are still being hatched!
Jon fell asleep on the couch straight-away and I was up all night with a fever & chills & general icky-ness. Jon wrote me a prescritpion for anti-biotics today and advised me to stay home from the office and just sleep. (Yes, he got his very first presriber's number a few weeks ago! It's a milestone!)
It's 30 degrees C here, pretty hot, and I have the air con off, I have one of Jon's big sweatshirts on, with fuzzy warm sweatpants & woolly socks. I hope these drugs start working soon!!!
You can see all of our photos on Webshots:
Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary
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