Sunday May 10, 2009 - KOALA'S!

Today we headed off to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary to see the koalas! Lone Pine is about 20 minutes outside the city, so we headed out mid-morning to go see some fun creatures. There are other animals at Lone Pine other than koala’s but they do have over 130 koala’s. We saw lots of birds, kangaroo’s, wallaby’s, Tasmanian devil, dingo’s, wombats, and of course, the highlight, the koala’s. You have to pay extra to cuddle and get your picture taken with the koala. Of course that was the main reason we were there, so I shelled out the money (about $11 USD) to have the experience. I held a 4 year old female named Serenity. She was so soft! They really do just grab on a hug and she even lifted her nose up to my face to give me a kiss :) She didn’t smell at all and enjoyed just burrowing her head into my shoulder. It was so cool. Definitely an awesome experience. I had Tom take plenty of photos while I snuggled and posted them on Facebook. I wish I could have spent more time, but it went by in a minute or 2. They have pretty strict regulations on the koala cuddling. It’s actually banned in New South Wales, but still allowed in Queensland where we were. They do only let each koala get cuddled for a max of 30 minutes per day and each koala gets every 4th day off, that way they all have plenty of time to eat and sleep. They sleep a lot because eating so much eucalyptus basically gives them a buzz all the time. Koala’s are actually quite interesting. Eucalyptus is actually extremely hard to digest. It has a high fiber and low protein content and koala’s can’t break down cellulose, the main component in eucalyptus. The koala however has specialized bacteria (yay for bacteria) in their intestine that breaks down the cellulose. Eucalyptus is also 40 to 65% water and the koala is able to utilize the water from the eucalyptus to maintain its functions, so it doesn’t have to drink water. In an aboriginal language koala actually means “the one who does not drink water.”
There’s also a big fenced in area with kangaroo’s and wallaby’s that you can enter and feed and touch. They also have several different shows that go on during the day, a koala show, a birds of prey show, a crocodile and lizard show, a sheepdog show. We didn’t however make it to any of those. Just walked around and checked out all the animals.
After the sanctuary, we stopped by Mt. Coot-tha where there is a lookout at the top of the mountain, some hiking and botanical gardens at the foot of the mountain. We parked and headed out to go on a short hike to a set of falls, however when we reached the area where the falls were supposed to be, we found that the falls had dried up. Queensland, Brisbane area especially has been in a drought for a while. In lodging establishments there are signs asking patrons to limit showers to 4 minutes and a lot of houses have signs saying they use recycled water. Anyway, after the bust at the falls, we headed to the botanical gardens and walked around just inside the entrance (it is free to get into) for a bit, then headed back to the city, without going up to the lookout.
That evening, we grabbed some quick dinner at Subway then headed out to see “Star Trek.” Now I am not a fan of the original, I’ve not actually seen any of the movies, except for maybe some bits and pieces when I was younger. I was always more of a “Star Wars” fan. I did however love the new Star Trek. I loved the characters and the story. I really enjoyed it. Now not being a fan of the originals I have no idea how a Star Trek fan would react to it, but I loved it. I’ll have to talk to my brother Craig and see what he thought of it, he has seen all the other Star Trek movies. Plans tomorrow are walking tour of the city and doing abseiling.