Australian word of the day: Nappies – Diapers. As in: Hope we won’t run out of nappies for Shir and Orr today on
We spent the last two days learning more and more about Australian wildlife. Yesterday we visited the Billabong Sanctuary, a great Aussie zoo a few km south of town. The main attractions were crocodile feedings, koala petting, cassowary feeding, fish feeding, dingo feeding etc…We passed from one guided feeding to another, and tried to pick up as much of the explanations as we could despite heavy local accents and rugby jokes.
Here are some interesting Koala facts – they sleep 18 hours a day; they eat only eucalyptus leaves; Koala is aboriginal for “no water†– they get all their H20 from the leaves they munch; a koala pregnancy lasts only 36 days; the jellybean sized newborn crawls into the mother’s pouch where it spends almost a year until mommy kicks it out, forcefully. And lastly, the koala has a tiny brain, leaving most of its skull empty.
We finally saw a cassowary, a strange ostrich-like bird of which only 1500 are left in
We got to hold a 3 year old crocodile whose mouth was taped up for our safety. The smooth bellied critter was less than 1 meter long. Hard to believe than in 30 years he may be over 5 meters long. In fact, some male crocs reach 7 meters length. They never stop growing. And they can live to be over 50 years old. The croc feeding was impressive, although we learned that crocs are very lazy. They will wait until the food is practically in their mouth before lunging for it. But when they do, what amazing force in their jaws.
In the evening we checked into a campground a bit closer to the beach and town center. We had a good steak dinner with one of our favorite wines from our early days as a couple – a Cabernet Shiraz Merlot blend by Jamieson’s Run of Coonawara,
We spent today on
The tour driver/guide was a nice fellow of Peruvian descent so we chatted for a bit in Spanish as well. The best thing we did on the tour was actually take some advice for after the tour. He showed us a place called Bungalow bay, a resort, where every day at 4:30pm a local guide feeds the lorikeets (kind of colorful parrot). So after our tour was over we lazed around Horseshoe bay for 2 hours and then went to see the Lories.
What an amazing spectacle. Over two hundred brightly colored birds flying around and landing all over us trying to get at a mixture of bread and sugar water. You gotta see the pictures.
Tomorrow we continue south to the Whitsundays area.
Good night,
-Hemi