18:51 Sun.
5 Nov, 2017

I wonder what animal we will see?

Brisbane , Australia
19 °C
Partly Cloudy
4:53 am
6:10 pm

Monday morning we took an hour bus through the Brisbane’s suburbs to the Lone Pines Koala Sanctuary. Despite it’s name it is a normal zoo, with multiple species of Australian animals.

Sup homie?
Sup homie?

The zoo is of moderate size, maybe a bit smaller than Ljubljana’s. The main difference compared to the standard zoos elsewhere is that you can actually take a photo with a koala or go and feed a kangaroo. Yea, that’s right, kangaroos just roam large enclosure where you can enter or leave at your leisure. Moreover you can buy some kangaroo food for couple of $ and you can actually feed them.

Feeding a kangaroo
Feeding a kangaroo

We saw variety of sizes of kangaroos ranging from a small ones to the ones you could look straight into their eyes when they were standing in front of you. Despite being very muscular and large, we felt quite safe around them. They were mostly chilling, I guess being fed by the tourists whole days long gets them super lazy.

We were pretty excited about petting them, one thing that surprised me the most was how soft their fur was. It looks rough and dirty where in reality it was silky soft (even with the big ones) almost like a puppy.

Kangaroo
Kangaroo

Besides kangaroos we also watched a bird show where they flew some owls and eagles around and told us about them. It was interesting to see them fly just few centimetres in front of us.

Eagle
Eagle

And to see an owl gulp up whole mouse in a couple of seconds.

After the birds we went to see a sheep show, where they used 3 dogs to bring a group of ship from one side of the park to the other. It was fun watching the dogs run around the sheep while bringing them home alone. They also looked like they had a lot of fun, guess it beats fetching a stick.

After the shows we took the opportunity to hold a koala and take a photo with it. Again just like with kangaroos it’s fur was very soft, and it was surprisingly heavy.

Me and Veronika posing with a koala. One of my favourite photos from the trip.
Me and Veronika posing with a koala. One of my favourite photos from the trip.

Besides holding it we also had an opportunity to watch in several enclosures around the zoo. However they are not very active animals and sleep more than 20 hours per day. Luckily we were just in time for the zookeepers to change their food (eucalyptus) which made them a bit more active as they climbed around to get to the food.

All over the zoo we saw hundreds of large lizards. For some reason they weren’t enclosed but were freely running around the paths trying to find some sun rays.

Big lizard
Big lizard

Again we saw some dingoes, they were just remodelling their enclosure so they were in a smaller one but still seemed pretty happy. I think they were quite tamed and used to people. I think I saw some zookeepers walking one just like a dog.

So far most of the animals we saw we also saw in nature, or at least their close relatives. They did however have a couple of animals that are a bit more exotic that we didn’t see before.

And we also saw the strangest of all the animals – the platypus.

All in all we had a great day. We spent most of the time among kangaroos which were most fun to interact with and saw a couple of quite exotic animals for an European. However just next day we had a plan to visit something we knew since day one of our planning we will visit (hint: another zoo).

Some more photos from the zoo.

 

 

18:39 Sun.
29 Oct, 2017

Room in a tallest building in the city

Brisbane , Australia
25 °C
Partly Cloudy
4:58 am
12:00 am

We came back from Fraser island on Saturday evening.  The bus for the last stage of the trip was leaving on Sunday morning, so we had some time to explore the city of Rainbow Beach. As with most of the cities we visited up here in the north it was a small tourist city, full of students on a holiday visa. The interesting thing in the city is it has a large desert dune at the sea side toward south-east, from where it is nice to view the sunset. Sadly when we got there it was cloudy so no sunset and super cold (as usual for winter nights in Australia).

I wish I would put this image at every post. Basically we visited whole East coast seen on this image. From Melbourne and 12 apostles in the south to Cairns in the north and everything in between.
I wish I would put this image at every post. Basically we visited whole East coast seen on this image. From Melbourne and 12 apostles in the south to Cairns in the north and everything in between.

The next day early morning we took a bus to Brisbane. The last stage of our trip was only about 300 km so at noon we were already in Brisbane.

As always we stopped in between the trip couple of times, this time it was at gigantic kangaroo.
As always we stopped in between the trip couple of times, this time it was at gigantic kangaroo.

While it was an interesting experience going backpacking and sleeping in hostels at this point we were craving for some privacy. We met tons of new people and it was fun to hang out with them for some time, but at some times the age difference (they were mostly in their late teens or early twenties) did bring some tension or at least annoyance at our side (especially if they were British >.<). It was still fun though, for 10 days! That is why we booked an apartment in Brisbane. We would have booked a hotel but for some reason apartments are more than 2 times cheaper than hotels with additional bonus of having a kitchen which also saves money since you don’t have to eat outside. And to top it of they also have room service so each day they clean your room/apartment just like in a hotel.

When we arrived to Brisbane at around noon we were pleasantly surprised that our hotel was just couple hundred meters away from main bus/train station in the city center and that it was the tallest building in the city. It had around 80 floors in total, sadly we only got an apartment in 26th floor.

Hotel in Brisbane
Hotel in Brisbane

The apartments as all we’ve been in Australia was amazing. It had a large kitchen, living room, toilet and bathroom with bathtub and gorgeous bedroom with a view over the river and the city. This was really the best view I ever had anywhere. When you went to sleep you could look through the large windows directly onto the lights of the city below. The whole apartment was about 70 square meters and also had a fitness, sauna and swimming pool in the bottom floor of the skyscraper. It was almost shocking to sleep in a nice and soft bed after sleeping on the floor in Fraser island while some giant, cute rat like animals crawled over and through our tents in search of food (I forgot to mention that in previous post).

We stayed in Brisbane for total of four days /3 nights. It is an enormous city, we did some sightseeing around the city center and drove the ferry up and down the river. However we did want to relax a bit more after the intense 10 days of from Cairns to Brisbane.

During the day we explored the city center on foot and made some preparations for Monday and Tuesday where we had some animal petting on our schedule, while in the evening we went to the pool. All in all it was nice to visit but not much to do in the city alone. However there are thousands of fun activities to be done in close proximity, but more on this in my next post.

Meriton Suites Herschel Street, Brisbane - Night view from our bedroom.
Meriton Suites Herschel Street, Brisbane – Night view from our bedroom.

 

 

15:14 Sun.
10 Sep, 2017

Brisbane

Brisbane , Australia
15 °C
Clear
5:51 am
5:39 pm

So after about 12 days of backpacking  through hostels, boats and wilderness we have finally arrived to Brisbane. The last big city of the east coast.

In the last week we have spent hunting for dingos on a deserted island about quarter of Slovenia in size. There are no roads on the island so we spent most of the time traversing on a 4x4s, one of which I was lucky enough to drive.

We actually were lucky enough to see couple of wild dingos, not nearly as many as the guides made us believe we will encounter beforehand. It still impressive we saw some, its like running into wild wolves in Slovenia.

Wild dingos on Fraser island. Watching them from a safety of a car.

Now we have two cool things planned for tomorrow and Tuesday in Brisbane and on Wednesday we move to the Gold coast for two days before returning back to Sydney. Sadly our trip is coming to an end.