04.03.2014Koalas and Kangaroos!

Passing by Brisbane we made sure to stop for longer this time. One of the “Must Sees” in Brisbane is the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. The sanctuary is rated one of the “Top 10 Zoos in the World” and famous for being the world’s first and largest koala sanctuary, with over 130 koalas, hundreds of kangaroos and a large variety of Australia’s other wildlife.
Just after we entered we were greeted by this free-roaming lizard posing for us:

On our way to the koalas we stopped at the Tasmanian Devil section. Here we got to watch these little meat-lovers that can only be found living in the wild on the Australian island state of Tasmania. Uninterrupted, Tasmanian Devils can eat up to 40 % of their body weight within only 30 minutes. Imagine yourself eating ~30 kg of meat… 🙂

Before getting too impatient we headed on to some of our favorite animals, the koalas. Why are koalas one of our favorite animals? Well, besides looking incredibly cute and having very soft and bushy fur, they love to chill. They hang out in the trees and eat eucalyptus and when they’ve eaten enough they sleep, before going on with eating again. Which other animal has such a relaxed life and looks so cute? 😉

Koalas typically inhabit open eucalyptus woodlands and the leaves of these trees make up most of their diet. Because this diet has a limited nutritional and caloric content, koalas are largely sedentary and sleep for up to 20 hours a day. And indeed, all the koalas we saw were either eating or sleeping…

Even when they are eating they look sleepy…

And they don’t leave the tree for sleeping. They curl up and fall asleep without falling from the tree 🙂

This one doesn’t seem to have chosen the most comfortable sleeping position:

The best part was, that we could even cuddle a Koala! How could we resist?

The fee you pay is used to fund new enclosures, research projects and eucalyptus plantations. And no worries, the park has strict regulations which ensure that each koala is not cuddled for more than thirty minutes a day.

As we continued on we saw this posing little reptile. Definitely no cuddling for him!

We passed some bird enclosures with parrots and this fluffy little guy:

And headed on towards the kangaroos, passing some free-running ostriches:

And the wombats. They are the koala’s closest living relatives, but although they look cuddly too, they like to bite petting hands…

Then we reached the kangaroo meadow and immediately spotted several dozens of them mowing the lawn. We bought some kangaroo food at the entrance and managed to get really close to them while feeding:

At first the kangaroos seemed rather shy and only carefully approached us. But once they sensed that they had nothing to fear and were only being fed, they seemed more relaxed:

This one even let us stroke him and smiled into the camera 🙂

But of course not without asking for more food just a moment later:

Then another kangaroo joined in. Parallel feeding:

And once the bigger kangaroos noticed what was going on they joined in as well:

After the kangaroos had finished the last bit of food we continued our loop through the park. We saw some more lizards:

And in the last enclosure we saw one of Australia’s largest lizards, a perentie. They can grow up to 2.5 meters long and have remains of a venom gland. That is why bites from these lizards take a long time to heal. Lucky for us this one seemed to be pretty stuffed from his previous meal and besides that he was behind bars.

After this little excursion into Australia’s wild-life we set out to explore some of the city. Brisbane is Australia’s third largest city with just over 2 million people living in the metropolitan area. We walked around most of the inner part of the city before we headed for the illuminated Ferris wheel in the evening:

From nearly 60 m above the ground we had a great view over Brisbane’s skyline:

The next part of our trip would take us further south and towards Sydney. On our way we should pass some beautiful towns and beaches along the east coast and were already wondering what to expect.