4206 A warm koala sleeping.
4208 A cool koala sleeping.
4214 Diana and her new buddy. At this point he’s poop free!
4216 I think she’s worried he may be starting up again. I love those ears!
Nov 8 – At Sea. Today’s my day to take a break. I didn’t do anything at all but read, write and eat. No Tai Chi, no Qui Gong, nothing. Great day!
Nov 9 - Brisbane, Australia. This is the first time we’ve been in Brisbane (Briz’-ben) the capital of Queensland and Australia’s third largest city. It’s located on the river of the same name and is a very livable place. This area is called the Gold Coast and Brisbane is known as ‘the green behind the gold’ because it has a great deal of green space in the form of parks and gardens. What’s the difference between a park and a garden? In a garden you can’t play sport or at least traditionally you shouldn’t. Today the line is being blurred by various groups who, while not actually competing in a game, will kick a soccer ball around a garden; much to the dismay of their elders who came there for a quiet chat or to sit and watch people or animals.
The site of the city was explored by John Oxley in 1823 and became one of Australia’s infamous penal colonies in 1824. The convict settlement became a town in 1834 but freemen couldn’t settle within 50 miles of it until 1839 when its function as a penal colony ended. It vied with Cleveland, not Ohio but a nearby town, for preeminence in the area. That rivalry ended in 1854 when Cleveland’s wharves burned down. Anyone besides me find it suspicious that a former penal colony’s rival suffered a devastating fire? I smell a rat. A very seriously charred one but a rat nevertheless.
We are not staying in town but heading out to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. Queensland is the last state in Australia that allows visitors to hold Koalas. It’s been banned everywhere else. I’m not sure the Koalas voice was heard in this discussion but there’s no shortage of whackos that will volunteer to speak ‘for’ anything to anyone. The fact that koalas live a much longer and healthier life in sanctuaries seems lost on them because it’s not ‘natural’. Well bull poop is totally natural, but I’m not eating it. Unlike the usual mantra that ‘natural’ is good, it only means it occurs in nature and holds no indicator for desirability.
We took a short drive around the city past some of the landmarks, Parliament, the Treasury, City Hall and the Old Customs House. Part of the drive was along the Brisbane River, in most places it was nicely landscaped and bordered by parks. It is a pretty setting. One thing that’s a little strange, the Yellow cabs here are actually painted a quite strong orange. Not quite ‘burnt’ but very close to University of Texas, Austin orange.
The aptly named Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary is the first and largest koala facility in the world. It’s home to over 130 of these sleepy marsupials. Their typical day is 18-20 hours sleeping, 1 hour total in moving and 3 hours eating. Problem is their diet, of the 600 types of eucalyptus trees in Australia these picky little buggers will only eat the leaves of about 16. And that’s almost all they will eat. The carbohydrate, protein and fat content of the leaves is so low they have to eat over a pound of them each day. The water content is high enough that koalas rarely if ever drink water. This diet produces a profound energy shortage and explains why they sleep so much and are active in the coolest parts of the day.
The koala has a very specialized digestive system that allows it to get every bit of energy from its poisonous food. It’s a little gross but here’s how it works. When they’re born, little more than a half formed fetus, they climb into the mother’s pouch and attach themselves to a teat which swells up and pretty much locks them in place for a time. When they’re ready to be weaned the mother produces ‘pap’, a specialized form of feces that the joey eats. This passes the micro-organisms needed to digest and detoxify the otherwise dangerous eucalyptus leaves from the mother to the joey. If they skip this step the joey’s first meal of its favorite food will be its last.
There are a great many ‘cute’ animals if you only consider their looks. Koalas not only look cute they are cute and cuddly to boot. Diana definitely wants to hold one and, since this is the last place you can do it, so do I. Our first stop was the general store to get tickets and then on to the koala center where they let you get your photos holding the little comics. There are strict limits on how long a koala can work in this area. But if they start to show signs of stress or irritation, they are taken back to their tree and a fresh one is brought out. They work about 20 minutes and then get 2 days off. I guess they have a very strong union. I must say that they are heavier than one might expect. You make a seat out of the palms of your hands at just about the level of you navel and they drop the koala’s butt into it. They take a photo that’s included in the price and you get to take a few with your own camera too.
Diana got one that had just come on duty. As the handler was giving Diana instructions on how to hold it, it began to do its dooty. Diana mentioned it to the girl and she said that it almost always happens when they first come out because they’re just waking up and have to go. Once Diana was holding the koala it was looking at her and she was looking at it. I don’t know which one was making me laugh more. The koala struck several poses while Diana was holding it. I guess it knows its job pretty well. Their metabolism is very slow to help them absorb the scant nutrients that exist in the eucalyptus leaves but their natural heart rate is pretty rapid. Keeps the blood circulating to warm or cool them.
When you observe them in their trees they strike a multitude of sleeping poses. Once they get those claws latched onto the branch they are very secure. Most of the sleeping positions involve their butts being planted on something. Their posture can tell you something about how they felt when they were getting ready so sleep. If they’re in a compact little ball they were cool and if they are spread out they were warm. Some of the poses are so human that it’s a chore not to personify them.
Cultural Note: Walt Disney has a lot to answer for in that area. The basic misunderstanding of the relationship between humans and animals is largely due to his films. Agenda driven documentaries have put the final touches on the misunderstanding to the point where a great majority of people in the US think, and unfortunately vote, based on the myth that animals are blessed with a better understanding of the natural world than we have and a greater empathy for ‘mother earth’. What a giant crock!! Most non-human inhabitants of the earth are just looking for their next meal or fearful of the reality that they might be it. Not to mention the poor, innocent plant life that hasn’t hurt anyone and yet tons of it is slaughtered every day by those evil, mean-spirited herbivores and Vegans.
Koalas are not the only attraction at the sanctuary. We also saw platypuses (I still maintain that this plural should be platypi), turtles, dingoes (Australian spelling, don’t try to Quale me), golden possums, wombats, kangaroos, wallabies, crocs and birds of many types (lorikeets, owls, eagles, kookaburras, cockatoos, emus and others). We decided to go to the Birds of Prey show because it’s small scale here, not like the shows at larger parks. It’s in a very informal setting on a hillside with just a few rows of steel and fiberglass chairs under a partial shade screen like you see at plant nurseries.
The birds were handled by two girls in outback type uniform. They also wore a very heavy leather glove when the birds were landing on them. Just as the show started it began to drizzle. The first two hawks were a little bothered by it but the owls that came next seemed to be saying, “Hey, what’s up with this?” The first owl was very familiar to me, a Barn Owl. Looks a lot like a Snowy Owl, very white with a heart shaped face and no discernible ears. We had them in Pennsylvania and the PA Dutch consider it a very good omen if you have one living in your barn. Keeps the darn ‘natural’ rats and mice from eating all the animal feed.
The next bird was a Barking Owl. They emit a barking noise while flying that allows them to echo locate in a way similar to bats. They have a much narrower head and look almost like a hawk in profile. Their coloring is also very hawk like, light brown, speckled in white. It was odd to hear him chattering as he flew because almost all owls are extremely silent fliers. They have specialized feathers on the edges of their winds that break up the air flow and make their flight very silent.
They had each bird fly directly over the audience and they stopped the performance if anyone stood up or moved. The birds were flying so low that it someone stood up it could cause a collision that would not be fun for the bird but even less fun for the human. When they swooped by from behind it was a little weird but when they came directly at you headed toward the back it was exciting. You and the bird were eye-to-eye for a few seconds before it whooshed over your head. Whooshed is an apt description, when the Barking Owl went directly over my bald head, it could easily feel the breeze. I don’t think he cleared my by more than 2 inches.
The last two birds were not bothered by the rain, which had increased to a downpour during the Barking Owl’s time in the spotlight. The first was a White Bellied Sea Eagle. This is a large, mostly white bird. All the birds made their entrance by flying in from quite a distance atop a nearby hill. The eagles came in from much further out. They’ve all been attracted by small pieces of meat that the girls hold in their gloved hand. In the center front of the small seating area they have a large branch set in a flower bed on which the birds can sit while we get a look at them. In the picture I took of the sea eagle you can see the streaks of raindrops falling heavily. It’s warm and humid so the rain actually felt good to both Diana and I. Women with fancy hairdos were running for cover, which caused a stoppage in the show.
The last, and largest bird, was a Wedge-tailed Eagle. It seemed about 20% larger than the sea eagle and based on the reaction of the handler significantly heavier. She had a couple of dead mice that she fed to the eagle to let us see that he swallowed them whole. He obviously knew that she was going to give him another one when she walked in front of the other side of the seating area. One happy bird for sure. At the end of the show our time here was just about up so we headed for the front gate. I wanted to get a bottle of water and while I was in line I notice a small package that contained two chocolate koala bears. Now that’s not playing fair, chocolate and koalas, either is attractive, together irresistible.
On the way back to the ship we stopped atop Mount Coot-tha, a small hill that overlooks Brisbane for a nice view of the city and the river. Couldn’t see both in a picture that was close enough to see the city clearly. It was visible if it was running toward or away from the mountain but in the city it ran from side to side and was just too narrow to provide a view.
It was a Big Screen Movie night in the Queen’s Lounge, The Amazing Spiderman, so no entertainer. Spent the evening talking and lounging about in the Explorer’s Lounge listing to the string trio.
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