Making friends with the natives

Trip Start Jul 27, 2004

Trip End Dec 21, 2004

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Where I stayed

Explorers Inn In Brisbane

(Brisbane hotels)

Flag of Australia Brisbane, Australia
Wednesday, August 25, 2004

After enduring another flight (Kerry is getting better, Paul is getting worse) we finally arrived in Brisbane and made our way to the Explorers Inn which is the mini travel inn type place that we are staying. There isn't much to say about Brisbane itself, it looks like any normal city but for the state capital it is very laid back and chilled. We went with the flow and started to wander around the city centre and botanical gardens (not as good as Sydneys), unfortunately we forgot to look at any signposts and ended up wandering around the university campus, with all of the undergraduates going to lectures, and couldn't find our way out. We just ended up getting deeper into the campus surronded by buildings, we nearly enrolled on a course so we would get given a map.

Eventually we found our way out which was good as the next day we went to a Koala sanctuary which neither of us would have wanted to miss. We travelled on a local bus (number 430 from the Myer centre) out of the city centre to the Lone Pine Sanctuary which is home to 130 Koalas plus lots of kangaroos, wallabys, wombats, tasmanian devils and other Australian wildlife

Beauty and the beast (you decide)

. The sanctuary is set in a forest of eucalyptus trees (unsuprisingly!!), and although the animals are mostly seperated from the public they aren't in cages just with wooden barriers surrounding their pen things.

The Koalas were so sweet and amazingly good balancers, they could just precariously sit on one little branch and sleep!! In fact thats all they really do (for 19 hours a day - sounds like Paul). Some of them had little tiny babies in their pouches and hanging on to them it was so cute. The best bit though is that you are allowed to cuddle one, they are actually really heavy and cling on to you like mad. They have really soft fur, but their eyes are a bit beady. So after we both had a cuddle we went and had lunch (forgetting to wash our hands Uuurrgh!!!)

After lunch it was Kankaroo time, we went into the Kangaroo enclosure which housed dozens of Kangaroos and wallabys, you were allowed to just wander aroung amongst them and they didn't care how close you got, you could even stroke them. We had bought some food from the shop to feed the Kangaroos with which was a bit scary as they all wanted some and one of the big ones mistook Kerrys little finger for a food pellet! Kangaroos are very messy eaters and slobbered all over our hands (we remembered to wash our hands after that!). The nice thing about being in the enclosure with them was that you could just watch them sleeping, eating or jumping. They can jump really high and really fast and cover amazing distances.

Well after our day of acting like Terry Nutkins we liked it so much that tomorrow we are going to have a Dolphin encounter, will let you know all about it. xxx