18:51 Sun.

5 Nov, 2017

Lone Pines Koala Sanctuary

I wonder what animal we will see?

Tags: animals, Brisbane, eagle, emu, kangaroo, koala, lone pine, owl, tasmanian devil, zoo

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.

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.

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.

This one had a tail thicker than my neck.

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.

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.

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.

It's safest for dog to actually walk on top of the sheep. This is supposedly first thing they teach puppies. — It’s safest for dog to actually walk on top of the sheep. This is supposedly first thing they teach puppies.

The dogs were quite friendly, this one was some Australian breed.

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.

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.

Poor fella almost had a heart attack when he saw all the eucalyptus was gone.

Trying to reach the next branch with eucalyptus.

Koala with a baby (joey as we learned). Can you spot it?

Me holding a koala, this one got quite snug with me.

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.

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.

Howling to the moon in Europe. :) Just kidding he was jawing. — Howling to the moon in Europe. 🙂 Just kidding he was jawing.

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.

Norway #2

Boat trip

Day 62 , 85 remain

Tags: boat trip, eagle, fishing, lofoten islands, norway, seagull

Lulea , Sweden

8 °C

Fair

7:03 am

5:28 pm

Soon after, we boarded BO-AT (Buoyancy Operated Aquatic Transport). As we were boarding they gave us “wet-suits”, to prevent us from being cold. It was a sunny day, so I didn’t felt like I needed one. Soon we departed and were traveling with much higher speed than I anticipated from a boat this size, I started to regret my decision of not taking a wet-suit as cold winds started to blew.

Mikel wearing protective suit on the boat. It got quite chilly with the wind.

We sailed alongside beautiful landscape, full of small islands and stopped after about 20 minutes. The “captain” and his “first mate” gave us 5 (big) fishing rods and thought us how to fish. Soon after, to my greatest disbelieve, fishes started biting. And not some small fishes, no they were big, very big. We caught around 7 of them in about 10 minutes, then we were on our way again.

We continued between two big islands. Landscape here (all over Lofoten to be precise) was very interesting. Despite being near the sea, there were little to no trees and majority of vegetation was alpine, on higher grounds there were only grass and rocks. On the shady sides of “mountains” (the highest being less than 400m high) there was snow, a lot of snow.

Lofoten mountains rising out of the sea.

Lofoten is located above the arctic circle, the weather is so cold up there that snow never melts.

After about an hour of sailing we turned in to a small fjord. There they served us fish stew, which tasted surprisingly good (as I don’t like fish that much). If nothing else it warmed us up, since we were mostly in the cold shade (fjords).

After meal we started heading back. This time we took a different route. Instead of going between islands, we went around southern one. Not long after we reached other side of the island, “first mate” started throwing bread crumbs in to the water. Seagulls soon started flying closer and closer, picking bread from the water. More and more gathered and closer and closer were they coming up to the point when they started landing on people and picking bread from their hands.

While this was spectacular to watch it wasn’t the main reason we went this way. As we soon learned, big screaming flock of seagulls attracted something else, something bigger. A big shadow fell on the ground as big eagle covered the sun. 🙂 At that point we threw some of the fishes we caught in to the water. Eagle slowly started to circle the site, descending until he plummeted in to the water, grabbing the fish. Surprisingly (?) he wasn’t successful on his first run, which was good for us, as we got another chance to watch him at his attack dive. Sadly by the time he caught the fish we were just a too far for my camera lens to get a 1M$ shot. But still, I managed to get some decent pictures.

Shortly after we arrived back to the port. Whole boat trip was about 4h long and I think worth every penny. I would go again to Lofoten just because of this trip. It was really an amazing experience that you just don’t get, if you travel alone.

After we came back to the camp, we decided to go canoeing. Three person were able to fit in to one canoe and as soon as we figured out how to put them in to the water, without getting wet, we were off. The lake was big, long to be exact. It took as around an hour to reach other end. There were no houses this far in to the mountains, nothing to make noise, just calm mirror-like water, trees, mountains and nothing else; surreal.

Canoeing in the lake beside the corteges.

After almost 3 hours of canoeing we landed at camp and prepared for BBQ. More on this in my next post.