Lone Pine Sanctuary

We took the bus to the Lone Pine Sanctuary this morning. On our walk to the bus station, the students excitedly talked about holding koalas, something they can pay to do at the sanctuary. Lone Pine houses 130 koalas, and most of them were curled up in their trees when we arrived.

Before we attended the lecture on koalas, we watched four dogs herd sheep. Two of the dogs could barely contain their excitement before the show started. They were responsible for the grazing area herding, pushing the sheep through a gate, up a ramp, and finally into a pen. The other two dogs took over, jumping on the fence and ON THE SHEEP to get them to leave the pen. Then a sheep was shorn.

Actually, the wombat presentation was next. Only one wombat emerged from his tunnel, and so the guide moved us over to that pen. A wombat looks like a miniature bear, but the wombat is a marsupial, more like a koala than a bear.

And then on to the koalas! The presentation was held in a roofed picnic-type area with about a dozen koalas in trees. A few of them woke up and moved around, but mostly they slept. I stood in line and patted one who was held by the guide. She claimed she could distinguish one koala from another, and throughout the day when she walked by with another koala for the picture-taking, a student would call out a name – and usually get it wrong.

The last presentation was on the platypus. He was very active throughout the lecture, swimming up and down in his tank. This is the third platypus we’ve seen, and they are as fascinating as the koala. The platypus is an egg-laying, duck-billed mammal which can be on land or in water.

Most of the students left the sanctuary at this point. Charlie and I stayed on; the process of getting the correct change so that the students could get back on the bus kept us from seeing some of the exhibits. The wombats and the koalas were more lively this late in the day, the wombats moving about in their pens and the koalas eating eucalyptus leaves. A few of the koalas howled; it was a noise you don’t expect from such a cuddly-looking creature.

I forgot to mention that we can feed the kangaroos! We held a handful of pellets out, and the kangaroos would slurp it out of our hands. Charlie has a favorite kangaroo, a one-eyed ‘roo, and he saved his last handful of feed for that one.
The sanctuary also has dingos, snakes, a cassowary, and many birds. I heard a kookaburra laugh and watched rainbow lorikeets go crazy at feeding time. I plopped a hat on my head for protection as I moved through the feeding site.

We will be at Frasier Island for two nights. It is unlikely that I will be online while there.