The Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

Yesterday was me and Mary's 5th anniversary, so to make it memorable we headed to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, a park/zoo in the southwest of Brisbane that's been operating since 1927. It was great to finally see marsupials that aren't possums that live in my house. They had loads of different Australian fauna there, from the fuzzy and cute to the scaly and scary.


Most of them looked pretty much like this. Grey lumps in a tree that didn't move much.


Super cute though.






We went to the Birds of Prey show, where they showed off a bunch of hunter birds. This is Amiga, a wedge tailed eagle that hunts anything up to the size of a wallaby.


A white bellied sea eagle landing on a perch.


A handler bringing in an Australian masked owl named Jarrad. This guy was pretty nervous about the crowd. Before he flew anywhere he would anxiously watch the crowd, then turn away and eat the mouse offered to him.


A barn owl named Smudgie. She was very graceful in flight, less so when the mouse tail would dangle from her beak.

We also were around for the wild lorikeet feeding, where they set out dishes of sugary slurry for the dozens of wild lorikeets that live near the park.






This myna and her chick were pretty cute. The mom kept bringing cockroaches down for the baby to eat.

It wasn't all cute though. Some of the stuff we saw could definitely bite your face off.


Like this freshwater crocodile.


These lace monitors are too small to threaten you, but I wouldn't want to find one licking my face all the same.

The part of the park that was probably the most fun was the kangaroo/wallaby enclosure. You could buy bags of little feed pellets and the various animals would eat them right out of your hand. They were very comfortable around people too, so you could touch them, pet them, and do pretty much everything but ride them.






Me and a pretty-faced wallaby. That's actually what they're called.




This kangaroo was so hungry she grabbed my hand and wouldn't let go until all the pellets were gone. Clever girl.




A mom roo with a joey sticking out. When we first approached only the joey's tail was sticking out of the pouch, but after we offered the mom food the little one stuck its head out. It was shockingly cute.


This is a wombat. It is about 3 feet long and looks like a giant mutant hamster. Mary wanted to pet it, but apparently they bite.


Tasmanian devils also bite. They're only about a foot long though.






It's hard out here for a koala.