Healesville

Last Saturday, a kind colleague invited our family to go for a drive to Healesville, where there is an animal sanctuary and a reservoir.  The drive there took about an hour.  We bought lunch at a bakery, and ate it in a picnic spot up in the mountains.

The word "mountain" means different things to different people.  Coming from the mountains of the western United States, I would have called these "larger hills".  But when these are the largest hills you have, I understand the desire to call them mountains.  Anyway, that's just me being all snobby. 

One thing I have learned from living in Australia is that there are about a billion different types of eucalyptus trees.  I lived in Northern California for several years, in housing surrounded by eucalyptus trees.  There was just one kind of eucalyptus, and we called it "eucalyptus".  It was tall, with drippy bark, strong smell, and dry narrow leaves. 

Here, there are a bazillion eucalyptus trees, all with their own names and features.  Some are wide, some are narrow.  Some have white bark, and some have shaggy bark.  There are short eucalyptus trees, gigantic eucalyptus trees, trees with red flowers, trees with yellow flowers, and trees with white flowers.  Those that exude lots of sap from broken bark are called gum trees (where the kookaburra sits).  The others are called all sorts of other names.

We drove up into the hills near the Maroondah reservoir, and our friends pointed out all the "mountain ash" trees.  The mountain ash are another kind of eucalyptus -- the tallest flowering trees in the world.  But all eucalyptus.  Who knew?  (The other trees in the forest were fern trees.  Mountain drive through the forest wasn't that unusual, except all the trees were totally different.)

So now knowing that there are billions (ok, hundreds) of eucalyptus trees, I guess I can appreciate more the animals that eat only eucalyptus for their entire lives.

Isn't that koala just adorable?  We took the above photo of the koala after lunch -- we headed from the Maroondah reservoir to the Healesville Sanctuary, a zoo specializing in Australian animals. 

I loved the Healesville Sanctuary.  And who knew that live koalas were so cute?  I don't think I've ever seen such large koalas as I saw there -- my only koalas so far have been sleeping lumps in zoos.  Although koalas typically sleep about 23 hours per day, these were just getting fresh food when we arrived, so they were awake and crawling around.  They were too cute to be real.  I suspected animatronics.  Until the one started pooping.  It was cute poop, but animatronics don't poop.  Purely adorable.

We saw a bird show after the koalas.  And after that, Jonathan and Tim were really excited about feeding the parrots.  Another thing I didn't know is that parrots, lorikeets, cockatoos are all classified as parrots.  They range in size from tiny budgies (which are native to Australia, but we haven't seen in the wild) to huge sulphur-crested cockatoos (which we have seen in the wild -- a flock flew over our own park!).  The zoo had tons of parrots, many of which you could feed.
 

 

The above picture is Jonathan feeding a red-tailed black cockatoo.  Fancy name, eh?  And the picture below involves the hands of Jonathan and Tim and some sort of green parrot.  I don't know what it was.  But it was in the zoo.

 

For Nathan's benefit, we have now seen even more birds in the wild!  In addition to the sulphur-crested cockatoos, we've seen gray galah cockatoos with pink heads, crimson rosella parrots, and once a kookaburra hanging out on a low branch in the park as we walked to school. 

 

I digress.

 

The other super-cutest-ever Australian animal is the wombat.  Here's one with the zookeeper.

 

 

Wombats are like giant cuddly looking guinea pigs.  They're nocturnal, so when you see them in the zoo they're typically curled up asleep.  This one, however, named Lucy, woke up for an evening snack (that's sweet potato).  She crawled out of her den where she had been sleeping and snuggled her way into the zoo keeper's lap.  Jonathan saw that and was completely enchanted.  He came away truly longing for his very own wombat to snuggle with in return for sweet potatoes. 

 

Poor Jonathan.  I don't think it's going to work out.