Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

Brisbane, Airlie Beach, Whitsunday Islands and back again (Part IV)

Our last day in Brisbane we went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, which is a sanctuary not just for koalas, but other Australian wildlife as well: kangaroos and wallabies, wombats, flying foxes, platypus, Tasmanian devils, dingos, crocodiles and lizards, various snakes, emus, a cassowary and other numerous Australian birds: mostly cockatoos, but there were some tawny frogmouths, an owl, and some kookaburras in an enclosure.  (It was pretty funny to see the kookaburras in the cage when there are kookaburras flying around.)  And, of course, there were brush turkeys everywhere (kept trying to jump up on the outside picnic tables, a real nuisance), noisy miners, and big dragon lizards.

Joey rolled around on the ground with mama for a
little while before climbing up on her back.

You can (for a fee, of course) hold the koala and get your picture taken, but we opted out of that.  There was one koala with a really young joey, which was pretty much the cutest thing ever.  (I have never really thought that koalas were that cute but somehow, in real life, they're pretty adorable.)  It rough-housed with its mama for a little while before crawling up on her back, and she took it up onto the branches in the enclosure.

Emu

The largest part of the sanctuary is the kangaroo/wallaby visiting area.  It's a wide open enclosure that you enter and can walk around, pet and feed (if you're brave enough) and take pictures with the kangaroos.  Most of them were sleeping in the area sectioned off and reserved for marsupials only, but a lot were hopping, sitting, or laying around where us hominids could get close.  We were too nervous to get too close to them, but some of them came to us instead.

Kangaroo joeys are really... really adorable.

You could buy feed for the kangaroos and get them to eat it out of your hand.

For some reason there were a lot of ducks and pigeons in the kangaroo enclosure.

This dragon was just hanging out in the sun.

Besides the common dragons running around, they had a really big perentie (the largest monitor lizard in Australia, same subgenus as the kodomo dragon) and some Merten's water monitors.  The crocodiles weren't very big but I'd be a bit scared to see a full-sized one.  In the snake house we saw a couple big snakes, both venomous and not.  Hopefully we'll never see those in the wild, either.

This dinosaur bird is absolutely terrifying.  I don't know what I'd rather
not encounter in the Top End, a cassowary or a crocodile.
(Its feet-claws were pretty horrifying.)

We watched this koala very very slowly climb this eucalyptus tree.

The male Tasmanian devil was pretty old (about 10 years I think she said)
and a bit mangy looking (but maybe they're always mangy looking)

Tasmanian devils look something like a cross between a dog, a raccoon, a rat, and a pig.
(Mostly pig + rat, if I had to choose, actually.)

We caught a lot of the afternoon demonstrations: the Tasmanian devil feeding and information session, the platypus talk, and the koala session.  (Platypus are really, really, weird!)  One of the animal handlers also walked around with a dingo on a leash for people to get a closer look.  Surprisingly, they didn't have any echidna (I wonder why) and unfortunately they didn't have any quolls, numbats or bilbies.

We've still never seen dingoes in the wild, though
word on the street is they're quite common in some parts.

This reckless kookaburra flew down and stole some
of the meat from the tazzy devil's feeding (!)

Reid pointed out that while a lot of the Australian marsupials are very well-known to kids even from a very young age (koalas and kangaroos, of course, but also platypus and Tasmanian devils), they don't seem very common in American zoos.  I'm pretty sure we saw wallabies at the Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn and kangaroos in Denver, but I don't remember seeing any other Australian animals (mammals, I wouldn't necessarily remember birds or reptiles) in any of the zoos we've visited recently.  Had certainly never seen a wombat or a platypus before, never seen a Tasmanian devil or flying foxes.

(There were also two emus at Sasha's Farm in Manchester, MI, actually, but emus are probably pretty common.)  Now I'm a little curious why giraffes and sea lions are in every zoo in the US but not wombats and wallabies.

Sleepy koala sleepin' away the afternoon.