On The Road Again, Townsville

Driving to Townsville seemed like such a good idea at the time, to use Jon's favorite phrase. It was such a long, tedious drive on along the motorway. The whole day was a blur and there was much talk of abandoning our hotel reservations and bailing out in Airlie Beach.

We plugged on in hopes of getting on a dive trip out to the SS Yongala and we arrived in Townsville around midnight, bleary eyed is putting it mildly.



We set off in the morning to walk around the Saturday markets. Jon quickly abandoned me when he spied a Red Sox game on the TV in a sports bar. Beer and brunch was all the boy needed to hear; he disappeared into the dark back room into the glow of the big screen tv. He finally emerged when the locals turned off his game to watch the cricket and we were off to the Billabong Wildlife Sanctuary.

On first glance, the place is not exactly aesthetically appealing. First impressions be damned, I was going to cuddle a wombat if I had to do so in a porta-loo. We walked around while we waited for the cuddle time and saw all of the animal exhibits in under 10 minutes. With a half an hour to burn, we sat and fed the ducks.



Finally the hour was upon us, Belle the wombat came out to visit with the public. They are just the most adorable little creatures, but quite bristle-like when you touch them. We did our little cuddle and photos with Belle and started chatting to the keeper who happened to be from America. She was just about to go check in on the koalas and invited us to come on a little "behind the scenes" tour.

Normally, when you see koalas they are just lounging and lazily stuffing their cute little faces with eucalyptus leaves. When we entered the enclosure with the keeper, one of the little fur balls came down from his perch and was trotting around sniffing at our feet.



The greatest moment was when she pulled down one of the Momma Koala's pouches to reveal a little baby! It was a sight to make your heart melt.

After leaving the wildlife sanctuary, we explored Townsville a little bit. Our hopes had been to go for a swim in the lagoon, a man-made swimming area because of the prevalence of dangerous marine stingers in the area. Our bad luck, there was no water in the lagoon.



Plan B was to set off and grab a bite to eat. At 3:00pm, this is easier said than done. Lunch is no longer being served and dinner is not yet being served, so the kitchens at most restaurants are closed. We tried every restaurant on the Esplanade with no luck, so it was back to the hotel for a room service snack grumbling about how ridiculous the situation was.

We had tried to get reservations at the restaurant at casino restaurant because it was supposed to be the nicest in town (the criteria being that they have tablecloths), but the only serve on select nights during the week and we couldn't get a booking. Townsville was just not being kind to us at this point.

The steak house across the street was settled for and the only highlight of the meal was the salt was pink. Australian pink salt, who knew?

Too tired from his early morning boozing to go out on the town, Jon fell asleep shortly after the sun set leaving me to catch up on my movie viewing and find a dive operator to go out to the SS Yongala the following day - easier said then done.

The Kangaroo Flu

So, in hindsight, Jon and I both were not feeling well and we probably should have not gone down to the Koala Sanctuary, but we were so excited about it & we have so little time off together that we pushed through and went despite feeling kind of crummy.

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