Stalking the Wild Wombat: Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

James and I went to the Koala Sanctuary here in Brisbane last week and it was very cool! We really enjoyed getting to see lots of wildlife that are here in Australia “up close and personal!” There were lots of informational shows about the different animals which made the day even more interesting! Here’s some pictures from our visit!

This guy was at the entrance welcoming everyone in!

There was a sheep shearing demonstration and a sheepdog herding as well - very cool to see how quickly this guy could shear a sheep, and how amazing the dogs were at hearding the sheep!

cool looking chicken!

When we got into the field where the kangaroos were kept, we saw that people were feeding the kangaroos, and spoke to a woman that had some food for them - she asked if we had bought any, and when we told her no, she gave us the rest of hers! So nice!

So neat to see them hopping around!

Our first wombat sighting!! I must say, this guy was pretty big (3-4ft long), I sure wouldn't want to mess with him!

Emu!

The Koalas were so "chilled out!" I didn't realize this, but the keepers were saying that the reason why they sit around so much is because there is so little energy & nutrition and a lot of water in the eucalyptus plant (which is the only thing that they eat) not because the eucalyptus has a drug in it, which is a common misconception! They also only eat the tips of the branches, so for each koala in the sanctuary they have to have about 10 pounds of eucalyptus per day available for the koalas! The sanctuary has over 130, koalas currently, so if you start adding that up, that's a lot of eucalyptus!

Can't remember the name of this bird, but it was huge!

Possum - not the kind I've seen around the city climbing along the hydro lines! The ones I've seen don't look nearly this cute, they usually look more like oversized rats!

Petting a Koala!

I just realized, this looks like miniature koalas are sitting on James' head! the branches that the koalas were sitting on were so close!

This picture is from the bird of prey show - they had trained the birds to swoop to different spots and fly right in front of us!

This guy was hanging out at the lunch area!

This is my favourite picture of the koala - it shows just how relaxed they are sitting in their perches!

I love this one too, he looks like an old man watching tv on his lazy boy chair!

Black headed python - (not venomous) but so big! We got to pet it, it felt like plastic!

This is a brown snake, it appears pretty the second most deadly snake in the world, fairly aggressive, and also common to the Brisbane area! Everyone I talk to says that they're mostly in long grass and outside of the city, but there have been sightings around the city, YIKES!