 |
| Feeding the 15-footer Saltwater Croc must be a fun job! (Yipes!) |
| Erin's Journal for 2/18//03 Queensland This morning we wasted no time getting up and out. Our first agenda item was the Billabong Sanctuary, which we'd seen signs for all the way along the highway. It was a more open-style sanctuary, with all types of birds and kangaroos roaming free in the park, and a huge lagoon in the center of the place. Here they had a variety of informational meetings at different times, so we wandered only a little before joining the first group to see and hold a wombat. This guy was surprisingly cute, but had the big claws that said he could be a mean one if he wanted! Glenn held him - what a cute photo! Next up was the koalas, and we were surprised to hear that Queensland is the only state in Australia where it's still legal to hold them...hmmm, what about Kangaroo Island in South Australia then??? We didn't mention that. I held one again, as they are such cuddly little guys. There was another posed in a tree for photos, and he was kept in place happily by some concoction the ranger was feeding him from a syringe. Cute. From there we went back for the main show of the day, where we were able to hold a black cockatoo (rare), some rainbow lorikeets, a sugar glider, several pythons, and a baby crocodile. During this exhibition, the rain started pouring down, so we continued holding things under the picnic cover. Next up was the crocodile feeding. The rangers went into the pens with these HUGE crocodiles, which by the way were very cranky about now due to their nesting phase, and fed them by smacking their snouts with a stick, then dangling some raw meet until they'd lunge up and snap it off the stick. I got a great shot of the largest croc doing this - he was about twice the size of the ranger! The final show we stayed for took us through the other bird exhibits to see the very rare cassowary birds. These still run free up in the Cape Tribulation rainforest where we'd stayed earlier, but we hadn't seen any until now. They're weird looking! We fed them whole plums and bits of tomatos, while hearing of how aggressive they can get if you don't have food when you're near them! Finally we decided we must move on, and drove about 100 km before stopping for a late lunch. This was another good sanctuary to have seen, although we will likely stop into Steve Erwin's Australia Zoo. When asked what he thought of Steve Erwin, the crocodile ranger at Billabong said that although you're not supposed to comment on others in 'the trade,' most wildlife rangers think he's a TOOL. This means useless dude, and other Australians we've asked about him said much the same. They hate that other cultures would base their opinions of Australia on someone who acts like such a buffoon, much as they hated being judged like Crocodile Dundee! One thing this ranger did note: tool or not, Erwin makes millions a year for doing the same job, so perhaps some of the dislike is due to jealousy! We drove on to Airlie Beach from Townsville, which took the rest of the afternoon. This is the kick-off point for the gorgeous Whitsunday islands, where we planned to spend the next few days. We drove straight into town to go to an information booth and possibly book a sailing tour for the next day. When provided with our options though, we decided to do a couple of day trips rather than a 3 day, 2 night boating trip. I'm not all that crazy about the idea of sleeping on water, and Glenn was very cool about going for daytrips instead, though I know he would have loved the longer time on the boats. We also booked accommodation through the info people, as we had to book our tour for the next morning right away and include a bus pickup from wherever we were staying. We ended up at a very nice new caravan park on the outskirts, and after booking our tour for tomorrow we went and checked in. They had a pretty nice pool there, so we went for a swim and relaxed a bit, then cleaned up and went out to dinner at a small bar called Banjos. It had good chicken burgers, and we talked about wedding stuff for a while. We were then joined by a drunk guy who'd struck up conversation with me at the bar, and we were ready to leave after about 20 minutes of his whining. Loser! We went back to our cabin and got an early night, as we'd be meeting our bus at 7:40am. |
 |
| Black cockatoos are becoming rare. This one was very polite, but LOUD! |